Antica Cales
Calvi Risorta (CE)
Hidden gemHistory & archaeology
The story
At Calvi Risorta rests Cales, the town that gave its name to a wine praised by the Romans, with amphitheatre, baths and a theatre immersed in the Caserta countryside.
More gems in Calvi Risorta
- Sacred art
Grotta dei Santi
Calvi Risorta (CE)
In the tufo (volcanic tuff) belly above the Rio dei Lanzi, sixty life-size saints have been staring at you out of the dark for a thousand years. A rock-cut chapel frescoed from the 10th to the 13th century, a stone's throw from ancient Cales.
- Sacred art
Grotta delle Fornelle
Calvi Risorta (CE)
It was a Roman cistern, then it became a church and a cemetery carved into the tufo (volcanic tuff): on the far wall a monumental Ascension keeps watch over tombs hollowed out of the rock.
More gems: History & archaeology
History & archaeologyStatua del Nilo ("Corpo di Napoli")
Largo Corpo di Napoli
A river god reclining for centuries in a quiet square, whom Neapolitans call the Corpo di Napoli: he leans his bearded head among putti and a sphinx.
History & archaeologyCappella Pontano
Decumani
A small Renaissance temple on the decumanus, which the humanist Pontano had raised for his lost wife, still lined inside with Latin inscriptions dictated by his grief.
- History & archaeology
Sedile di Nilo
Decumani
On the corner of a small Spaccanapoli square survives the seat of the old Nilo quarter, where the nobles once gathered before the sedili of Naples vanished.
History & archaeologyPort'Alba
Napoli
A seventeenth-century arch cut into the walls leads to the booksellers' street, where stalls of second-hand volumes pile up among yellowed pages and the shade of the old city.
History & archaeologyPorta Capuana
zona Garibaldi
Between two cylindrical towers an arch of white marble opens like a Renaissance triumph, the old city gate facing the road to Capua.
- History & archaeology
MANN — Museo Archeologico Nazionale
P.za Museo
One of the world's great archaeological museums: here the Toro Farnese, the mosaics of Pompeii and the Gabinetto Segreto tell the whole ancient Mediterranean in a single visit.