Mausoleo delle Carceri Vecchie
San Prisco (CE)
Hidden gemHistory & archaeology
The story
For centuries the peasants swore that here, inside this brick drum on the Appia, the gladiators waited in chains for their turn in the arena. It was in fact an imperial tomb of the 1st century, and above the ancient entrance somebody built a chapel.
Access
Free from outside; interior by appointment (0823 844206)
More gems in San Prisco
- Sacred art
Sacello di Santa Matrona
San Prisco (CE)
At the end of the right aisle of an ordinary parish church you look up and the ceiling bursts into a sky of gold and lapis lazuli: 5th-century mosaics with Christ and the symbols of the Evangelists, among the oldest in Campania. Almost nobody knows they are there.
- Hiking
Monte Tifata e i ruderi del santuario di Diana
San Prisco (CE)
The mountain sacred to Diana Tifatina, where the holm oaks of the sacred wood gave the mountain its name: you climb among ruins that the shepherds still call the temple of Jupiter, and from the summit cross the Capuan plain opens all the way to the sea.
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.