Tempio italico e Castello Normanno di Casalbore
Casalbore (AV)
Hidden gemHistory & archaeology
The story
A Samnite sanctuary and a Norman tower a few steps apart: three thousand years of history stacked on a single hill.
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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 & archaeology
Santuario sannitico di Macchia Porcara
Casalbore (AV)
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.
- ◆ 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.