Parco Archeologico di Monte Cila
Piedimonte Matese (CE)
Hidden gemHistory & archaeology
The story
Five semicircles of megalithic walls, seven kilometres in all, raised in the 7th century BC and then forgotten in the myrtle scrub. From up there the Samnites watched the same plain you are watching.
Access
Trail FREE; guided visits with local associations
More gems in Piedimonte Matese
MuseumsMUCIRAMA — Museo Civico Raffaele Marrocco
Piedimonte Matese (CE)
In the former convent of San Tommaso d'Aquino sleep the Runner and the Zeus of Cila: Samnite bronzes pulled out of the mountain just above. A free museum nobody expects in a mountain town.
- Sacred art
Chiesa dell'Ave Gratia Plena
Piedimonte Matese (CE)
A Gothic jewel wedged into the old town, with the Sanframondo chapel and its fifteenth-century frescoes. You step through an anonymous door and find yourself in the Quattrocento.
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.