Area archeologica di Cellarulo
Benevento (BN)
Hidden gemHistory & archaeology
The story
Where the Sabato surrenders itself to the Calore stood the city's pre-Roman river port: reed beds, willows and the stumps of a bridge, in a strip of countryside outside of time.
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More gems in Benevento
History & archaeologyTeatro Romano e il Triggio
Benevento
The great Hadrianic theatre opens up all at once among the alleys of the Triggio, the oldest quarter, where Roman stone and medieval houses blur into one another.
◆ Sacred artHortus Conclusus
Benevento
In the garden of the San Domenico convent, the bronzes of Mimmo Paladino: a horse in a golden mask among ancient capitals and fountains, in a garden suspended between myth and meditation.
History & archaeologyPonte Leproso
Benevento
On the ancient Via Appia the stone arches stride across the river Sabato: the same threshold that travellers bound for Rome once crossed to enter Benevento.
History & archaeologyArco di Traiano
Benevento (BN)
Golden marble carved dense with reliefs, the arch that celebrated Trajan still marks the entrance to the road that led toward Brindisi and the East.
Sacred artChiesa di Santa Sofia
Benevento (BN)
A Lombard church with a star-shaped plan, a World Heritage site, where columns and arches trace an unusual geometry left almost intact for over a thousand years.
MuseumsMuseo del Sannio
Benevento (BN)
The medieval cloister of Santa Sofia, a UNESCO site, with its forty-seven columns that weave together real and fantastic figures, holds the layered memory of the Sannio.
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 & archaeologySedile 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 & archaeologyReal Albergo dei Poveri
P.za Carlo III
An eighteenth-century colossus willed by Charles of Bourbon to shelter the poor of the Kingdom: a façade running more than three hundred metres, among the largest historic buildings in Europe.