Posilippo Tunnel

In 1801 when the redesign project was under way in the Upper East Garden, Duke Friedrich II decided to have a dam built to link the rear palace courtyard with the Upper East Garden, in place of a wooden bridge. Beneath it, a tunnel measuring around 30 m in length was built using roughly hewn stones, enabling access to the Lower East Garden without any steps. Having travelled through Italy with the Grand Duke and Duchess of Russia in 1782 and visited Naples, among other places, in Campania, the Duke was so impressed by an ancient tunnel through the foothills there that he had the gallery built in its image and also named it "Posilippo". From the Ancient Greek "Pausilypon", the name means "the place which stops all suffering" and refers to a Roman villa there which once belonged to Augustus.