Piazza del Plebiscito
centro
FamousHistory & archaeology
The story
The great square opens between the colonnade of the basilica of San Francesco di Paola and the Palazzo Reale: a hemicycle, equestrian statues and an emptiness that in Naples is close to a miracle.
Access
FREE
More gems in centro
History & archaeologyNapoli Sotterranea / Galleria Borbonica
centro
Forty metres beneath the city, Greco-Roman tunnels and the gallery willed by Ferdinand II: aqueducts, wartime shelters and vintage cars abandoned in the belly of Naples.
History & archaeologyTeatro San Carlo
centro
The red and gold of the oldest working opera house in Europe, where since the eighteenth century the voice has risen towards the frescoed ceiling and the royal box.
History & archaeologyGalleria Umberto I
centro
Beneath the dome of glass and iron the light falls on the marble floor; footsteps and echoes get lost in the octagon, among the shopfronts of the late nineteenth century.
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.