Museo delle Farfalle
Guardia Sanframondi (BN)
Hidden gemHistory & archaeology
The story
More than a thousand butterflies from every continent, collected out of passion by the lawyer Pascasio Parente and arranged in silent cases in the heart of the Samnite borgo.
More gems in Guardia Sanframondi
VillagesGuardia Sanframondi
Guardia Sanframondi (BN)
A borgo (old village) of wine and silences, every seven years it wakes for the Riti di Penitenza, when the battenti (flagellant penitents) walk the alleys and the town turns medieval again for a week.
- Sacred art
Santuario dell'Assunta e i Riti Settennali dei Battenti
Guardia Sanframondi (BN)
Every seven years the hooded men come out of the Rione Croce and beat their chests with sponges bristling with pins, until they bleed, before the Assunta. The last time was August 2024: the next is in 2031.
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.