Villa Cimbrone — Terrazza dell'Infinito
Ravello
FamousSacred art
The story
A balcony of marble busts suspended over the gulf, where the gaze meets nothing at all: Gore Vidal called it the most beautiful view in the world.
Access
€ gardens
More gems in Ravello
- History & archaeology
Villa Rufolo
Ravello
The gardens that inspired Wagner's magic garden of Klingsor; in summer the stage hanging over the gulf turns music into a window on the sea.
- History & archaeology
Auditorium Niemeyer
Ravello
A white wave of concrete with a single eye flung wide open on the coast: Oscar Niemeyer's Mediterranean vision, curved and foreign among the stones of Ravello.
Sacred artDuomo di Ravello
Ravello (SA)
A pulpit borne by lions and clad in golden mosaics, the bronze door and the silence of a piazza suspended above the Costiera.
More gems: Sacred art
Sacred artCappella Sansevero (Cristo Velato)
Napoli (NA)
Beneath a veil of marble that still seems to breathe, Sanmartino's Cristo Velato rests in the chapel's half-light, and the whiteness of the stone deceives every eye.
Sacred artDuomo di Napoli
Napoli
Three times a year the city holds its breath as the blood of San Gennaro waits to liquefy, among Gothic naves and the gold of the chapel devoted to him.
Sacred artCappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro
Napoli
Behind a bronze gate lie silverware, gems and the jewel-studded mitre of the saint: a treasure heaped up over centuries by the devotion of Naples.
Sacred artChiesa del Gesù Nuovo
Napoli
The facade of pyramid-cut piperno stone hides symbols carved into the blocks, while inside the Baroque bursts out in marble and in the memory of the physician Giuseppe Moscati.
Sacred artChiostro di Santa Chiara
Napoli
A garden of pillars clad in yellow and blue majolica, where lemon pergolas and eighteenth-century scenes painted on the tiles keep the noise of the city at bay.
- Sacred art
Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio ad Arco
Via Tribunali 39
Bronze skulls stand guard at the entrance, and down in the hypogeum the cult of the anime pezzentelle (adopted souls of the dead) still leaves flowers and prayers beside abandoned crania.