Borgo medievale di Carinola
Carinola (CE)
Hidden gemVillages
The story
A Gothic-Catalan borgo (old village) left almost intact and almost ignored: the bell tower with its dome of yellow and green majolica, the Renaissance loggia of Casa Novelli, and at the top the ruins of count Riccardo's castle.
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More gems in Carinola
Sacred artBasilica di Santa Maria in Foro Claudio (l'Episcopio)
Carinola (CE)
Out in the fields, an Early Christian basilica with fourteen reused Roman columns and an apse where a Byzantine Madonna has been staring at you for a thousand years. On the walls, medieval peasants and craftsmen painted at work: the only portrait left of the people who lived here.
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Convento di San Francesco a Casanova
Carinola (CE)
Tradition holds that Francis of Assisi himself stopped here, coming down the road that led to the sea. A silent cloister at the foot of Monte Massico, where time seems to have halted in the thirteenth century.
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The oldest market in Naples unspools through the alleys of Montesanto: fish stalls, fry shops and old-time botteghe (traditional shops) in a hubbub that never stops.
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At the foot of Castel dell'Ovo, the little fishermen's borgo (old village) is now a marina of boats and restaurants: stone, salt air and the legend of Virgil's egg hidden in the foundations.
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The medieval heart enclosed by Aragonese walls and towers, a tangle of alleys where every four years the Festa delle Lucerne lights thousands of little lamps.
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Below the town's cliffs, the old fishermen's borgo (old village) with houses faded by the salt, boats hauled ashore and trattorias fragrant with frying.
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The oldest fishermen's borgo (old village) on Procida, an amphitheatre of pastel houses tumbling down to the harbour, where the boats sleep beneath the hanging laundry.