◆ Gems
832 places
◆ Sacred artChiesa di Santa Luciella ai Librai (teschio con le orecchie)
Napoli
In the crypt of a small church rediscovered in the maze of the Librai rests the skull with ears, which the faithful believed could listen to their prayers.
◆ Sacred artSant'Anna dei Lombardi
via Toledo
Eight terracotta figures mourn the dead Christ with faces of piercing grief, while in the sacristy frescoed by Vasari the ceiling fills with constellations and virtues.
◆ Sacred artSan Giovanni a Carbonara
Napoli
A double forceps-shaped flight of stairs leads up to the church, inside which the monumental tomb of King Ladislao rises like a tower of marble.
◆ 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.
◆ CastlesCastel Capuano
zona Garibaldi
An old Norman castle that for four centuries served as the courthouse of Naples: here justice held session in frescoed halls, in the shadow of nearby Porta Capuana.
◆ NatureOrto Botanico
via Foria
Founded in the Napoleonic age, the botanical garden on via Foria lines up glasshouses, palms and rare species across twelve hectares: a green breath a step away from the traffic.
◆ 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.
◆ Sacred artCatacombe di San Gaudioso
Basilica della Sanità
Beneath the basilica of the Sanità, early Christian catacombs where noble dead were portrayed with their real skull set above the painted body: death put on stage.
◆ Sacred artChiesa di Santa Maria della Sanità
Sanità
Fra Nuvolo's basilica keeps watch over the quarter it gives its name to: dedicated to San Vincenzo, 'o Munacone to Neapolitans, it holds the Catacombe di San Gaudioso beneath it.
◆ Sacred artBasilica di San Gennaro extra Moenia
Sanità
Outside the ancient walls, beside the catacombs that once held the body of San Gennaro: one of the oldest churches in Naples, in the shade of the Capodimonte hill.
◆ NaturePedamentina di San Martino
Vomero→centro
A fourteenth-century stairway dropping from the hill of San Martino down to the city: hundreds of steps through vegetable plots, gardens and glimpses of the bay — one of the finest urban paths in Naples.
◆ Views & panoramasPalazzo Mannajuolo (scala ellittica)
via Filangieri
The elliptical staircase climbs in a perfect spiral of steps and Liberty-style railings: lean over from the top and the eye falls into a vortex of stone.
◆ History & archaeologyMonte Echia / Pizzofalcone (ascensore)
S. Lucia
The tufo (volcanic tuff) hill where Partenope was born, the city's first nucleus: a lift rises up the cliff and at the top the gulf opens out from Santa Lucia to Vesuvius.
- ◆ Museums
Ospedale delle Bambole
Napoli
Behind a shop window in Palazzo Marigliano a craftsman mends glass eyes, porcelain arms and dolls' curls, in a workshop born more than a century ago.
- ◆ Sacred art
Complesso dei Girolamini
Napoli
Beyond the white facade open one of the oldest libraries in Naples and a silent picture gallery, among wooden shelves and canvases hung by the Oratorian fathers.
- ◆ Castles
Palazzo Sansevero
P.za San Domenico Maggiore
On the corner of piazza San Domenico the palace of the princes of Sangro still carries the echo of the night when Gesualdo surprised and killed Maria d'Avalos and her lover.
- ◆ Sacred art
Basilica dell'Annunziata e Ruota degli Esposti
zona Forcella
The revolving wooden drum where for centuries newborns were laid in secret, and from which so many Neapolitans inherited the surname Esposito.
- ◆ Villages
Mercato di Porta Nolana
zona Garibaldi
Beneath the Aragonese arch of Porta Nolana the fish market erupts with voices, crates of seawater and shellfish still alive: Naples at its most unvarnished.
- ◆ Sacred art
Cimitero delle 366 Fosse
Poggioreale
Ferdinando Fuga drew here one pit for every day of the year: 366 anonymous graves for the city's poor, an Enlightenment geometry of dying beneath the hill of Poggioreale.
- ◆ Sacred art
Presepe Favoloso
Sanità
In the sacristy of the basilica of the Sanità the Scuotto brothers have lit up more than a hundred figures: a presepe (nativity scene) where eighteenth-century tradition and fairy tale interlace, suspended between the sacred and sheer wonder.
- ◆ Nature
Vigna di San Martino
collina S. Martino
One of the largest urban vineyards in Europe, worked by the Carthusians since the fourteenth century: seven hectares of vines, citrus and olive trees hanging over the bay, a step from the city's chaos.