Sedile di Nilo
Decumani
Hidden gemHistory & archaeology
The story
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.
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Cappella 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.
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Guglie di San Gennaro
Decumani
The oldest of the Neapolitan spires, raised in thanksgiving to the patron saint who is said to have halted the lava of Vesuvius, his bronze statue keeping watch beside the Duomo.
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Immacolata
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In the heart of piazza del Gesù the Baroque spire soars straight up, an explosion of marble and statues crowned by the Immacolata turned toward the sky.
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San Domenico
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The square where the heart of Spaccanapoli beats, with the Baroque spire at its centre and the apse of the Angevin basilica that once held the rooms of San Tommaso.
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Statua del Nilo ("Corpo di Napoli")
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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.
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Port'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.
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Porta 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.
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MANN — Museo Archeologico Nazionale
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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.
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Real Albergo dei Poveri
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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.
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Twelve metres below the Rione Sanità, Greek tombs of the 4th century BC with frescoes intact — Egyptian blues and trompe-l'oeil: Hellenistic Neapolis found again in a baron's garden.