The Monumental Area of Neapolis extends for 240,000 m2. It was born at the end of a complex recovery work begun in the middle of the last century which allowed the monuments to be freed from subsequent superimpositions and to enhance the surrounding landscape. It includes the monumental part of the ancient city and a dense series of testimonies from various periods.

The ancient Neapolis neighborhood hosted the most famous monuments of the city: the Greek theatre, dating back, in its current appearance, to the 3rd century. BC but existing since the second half of the 5th century. BC, the Roman amphitheatre, of controversial dating, attributed by some to Augustus, by others to Septimius Severus, the altar of Hieron II, a grandiose altar for the city's public sacrifices and the Via dei Sepolcri, deeply embedded in the rock and flanked by Byzantine hypogea.

The backdrop to this extraordinary complex of monuments is the spectacular arch of the Latomie del Paradiso and S. Venera: ancient stone quarries which still bear the signs of extraction and in which, amidst a lush vegetation of orange trees and centuries-old trees, suggestive and very large caves, including the Grotta dei Cordari and the Ear of Dionysius, a long route that reaches a Roman columbarium known as the "Tomb of Archimedes".