Eremo di Cetrella
Anacapri
Hidden gemSacred art
The story
A small Marian hermitage tucked among the rocks below Monte Solaro, reached on foot through the scent of the scrub and the silence of the heights.
Access
not always open
More gems in Anacapri
In the water & divingGrotta Azzurra
Anacapri
You enter lying flat in a small rowing boat through a low cleft, and inside the water lights up in a luminous blue that seems to rise from the depths.
Nature & hikingMonte Solaro (seggiovia)
Anacapri
The chairlift climbs in silence over vineyards and gardens to the island's highest peak, where the eye takes in the whole gulf.
MuseumsVilla San Michele (Axel Munthe)
Anacapri
The white house that Swedish doctor Axel Munthe built among ancient columns and pergolas, with its granite sphinx gazing out over the Gulf of Naples.
History & archaeologyCasa Rossa
Anacapri
The Pompeian-red residence an American colonel wanted in Moorish style, today the keeper of the Roman statues recovered from the waters of the Grotta Azzurra.
Sacred artChiesa di San Michele (pavimento maiolicato)
Anacapri
A majolica floor tells of Adam and Eve driven out of the Garden of Eden, to be admired from above to take in the full sweep of its eighteenth-century colours.
- History & archaeology
Villa Damecuta
Anacapri
The remains of an imperial Roman villa on a sheer promontory, among olive trees and a medieval tower, with the gaze stretching toward Ischia.
More gems: Sacred art
Sacred artCappella Sansevero (Cristo Velato)
Napoli (NA)
Beneath a veil of marble that still seems to breathe, Sanmartino's Cristo Velato rests in the chapel's half-light, and the whiteness of the stone deceives every eye.
Sacred artDuomo di Napoli
Napoli
Three times a year the city holds its breath as the blood of San Gennaro waits to liquefy, among Gothic naves and the gold of the chapel devoted to him.
Sacred artCappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro
Napoli
Behind a bronze gate lie silverware, gems and the jewel-studded mitre of the saint: a treasure heaped up over centuries by the devotion of Naples.
Sacred artChiesa del Gesù Nuovo
Napoli
The facade of pyramid-cut piperno stone hides symbols carved into the blocks, while inside the Baroque bursts out in marble and in the memory of the physician Giuseppe Moscati.
Sacred artChiostro di Santa Chiara
Napoli
A garden of pillars clad in yellow and blue majolica, where lemon pergolas and eighteenth-century scenes painted on the tiles keep the noise of the city at bay.
- Sacred art
Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco
Via Tribunali 39
Bronze skulls stand guard at the entrance, and down in the hypogeum the cult of the anime pezzentelle (adopted souls of the dead) still leaves flowers and prayers beside abandoned crania.