Santuario sannitico di Macchia Porcara
Casalbore (AV)
Hidden gemHistory & archaeology
The story
Beside a spring surface the remains of an Italic temple from the Samnite age, dedicated to Mefite, goddess of waters and fertility, and destroyed in the time of Hannibal.
More gems in Casalbore
◆ History & archaeologyPonte di Santo Spirito
Casalbore (AV)
A pier and a few remains in the Miscano valley: this is all that survives of a Roman bridge on the via Traiana, the stretch of the Appia now recognised as a UNESCO heritage site.
◆ History & archaeologyTempio italico e Castello Normanno di Casalbore
Casalbore (AV)
A Samnite sanctuary and a Norman tower a few steps apart: three thousand years of history stacked on a single hill.
- ◆ Sacred art
Grotta di San Michele Arcangelo (Casalbore)
Casalbore (AV)
A cavity hollowed out of the living rock, a stage on the Via Sacra Langobardorum towards the Gargano: here Lombard pilgrims stopped to pray to the warrior Archangel, one thousand three hundred years ago.
- ◆ Sacred art
Santuario di Santa Maria dei Bossi
Casalbore (AV)
A country church in the middle of the woods, along the Pescasseroli-Candela drove road, built on top of a 2nd-century Roman funerary monument: faith resting on pagan bones.
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 & 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.
◆ 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.