Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Off the far left corner of Piazza Garibaldi, Via Garibaldi runs down to the sea, past the main Circumvesuviana terminal and, on the right, the Porta Nolana , a solid-looking Aragonese gateway that signals the entrance to Naples’ main fish market - a grouping of streets lined with a wonderful array of stalls piled high with wriggling displays of fish and seafood. Behind, towards the water, the church of Santa Maria del Carmine dates back to the thirteenth century and is traditionally the church of the poor in Naples, particularly fishermen and mariners - the main port area is close by. Axel Munthe, the Swedish writer and resident of Cápri, used to sleep here after tending to victims of the 1884 cholera outbreak. Just west, the still war-damaged Piazza del Mercato was for centuries home to the city’s scaffold, and is a bleak, dusty square even now. There’s little to detain you in this part of town, and you may as well cut back up to Corso Umberto I , which spears through the old part of the city, a long straight journey from the seedy gatherings of prostitutes and kerb-crawlers at its Piazza Garibaldi end, past many of the city’s more mainstream shops, to the symmetrical Piazza Bovio and its elegant seventeenth-century Fontana del Nettuno.

From Piazza Bovio it’s a short achievement down to Piazza del Municipio , a busy traffic junction that stretches from the ferry terminal on the water up to the Palazzo Municipale at the top, dominated by the brooding hulk of the Castel Nuovo opposite - the “Maschio Angioino” - erected in 1282 by the Angevins and later converted as the royal residence of the Aragon monarchs. The entrance incorporates a triumphal arch from 1454 that commemorates the taking of the city by Alfonso I, the first Aragon ruler, and shows details of his triumph topped by a rousing statue of St Michael. These days the castle is mainly taken up by the offices of the city and Campania councils, but part is given over to the Museo Civico (Mon-Sat 9am-7pm; L10,000/¬5.16), comprising a rather dull collection of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century frescoes and sculpture in the chapel and an array of silver and bronze objects.

Just beyond the castle, on the left, the Teatro San Carlo is an oddly unimpressive building from the outside; inside, however, you can see why this theatre was the envy of Europe when it opened in 1737 in time for Charles of Bourbon’s birthday, for whom it was built. Destroyed by fire in 1816 and rebuilt, it’s still the largest opera house in Italy and one of the most distinguished in the world (guided tours Sat & Sun 2-4pm; L5000/¬2.58; tickets tel 081.797.2111). Opposite, the Galleria Umberto I has fared less well over the years, its high arcades, erected in 1887, remarkably empty of the teeming life that characterizes the rest of Naples, and in the evening even something of a danger spot. Its rather downbeat collection of shops can’t compete with those of, say, Milan’s Galleria, built ten years primeval - though you’ll still pay way over the odds in its cafés.

Come out of the Galleria and you’re on Piazza Trieste e Trento , more a roundabout than a piazza, whose life you can watch while sipping a pricey drink on the terrace of the sleek Caffè Gambrinus . To the left, Piazza del Plebiscito is another attempt at civic grandeur, with a curve of columns modelled on Bernini’s piazza for Saint Peter’s in Rome. Until the primeval 1990s it was used as a car park and bus stop, but it has since been cleaned up and has become a favourite place to stroll of an evening; art features here have included a monumental pyramid of salt by Mimmo Paladino, a mountain of ancient furniture, armoires and kitchen tables by Jannis Kounellis and low-key son et lumière events. The church of San Francesco di Paola is floodlit at night, when it is at its most impressive. At other times its attempts at classical majesty (it’s a copy of the Pantheon in Rome) only really work once you’re standing under its enormous dome.

Opposite, the Palazzo Reale (Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri & Sun 9am-8pm, Sat 9am-11pm; L8000/¬4.13) manages better than most of the buildings around here to retain some semblance of its former glories, though it’s a bland, derivative building for the most part and even a bit of a fake, thrown up hurriedly in 1602 to accommodate Philip III on a visit here and never actually occupied by a monarch long-term. Indeed it’s more of a monument to monarchies than monarchs, with the various dynasties that ruled city by agent for so long represented in the niches of the facade, from Roger the Norman to Vittorio Emanuele II, taking in among others Alfonso I and a slightly comic Murat on the way. Upstairs, the palace’s first-floor rooms are decorated with fine Baroque excesses of gilded furniture, trompe l’oeil ceilings, great overbearing tapestries and lots and lots of undistinguished seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings. Best bits are the chapel, on the far side of the central square (you may have to ask someone to open this for you), with its finely worked altarpiece; the little theatre - the first room on the right - which is refreshingly restrained after the rest of the palace; and the terrace, which gives good views over the port and the forbidding Castel Nuovo. Look also at the original bronze doors of the palace at the bottom of the dwarfing main staircase, cast in 1468 and showing scenes from Ferdinand of Aragon’s struggle against the local barons. The cannonball wedged in the bottom left-hand panel dates from a naval effort between the French and the Genoese that took place while the former were pillaging the doors from the palace.

Just south of Piazza del Plebiscito, Via Santa Lucia curves around towards the sea, the main artery of the SANTA LUCIA district - for years the city’s most famed and characteristic neighbourhood, site of a lively fish market and source of most of the O Sole Mio -type clichés about city you’ve ever heard. It’s a much less neighbourly place now, home to most of the city’s poshest hotels on the streets around and along the seafront Via Partenope, though one or two decent restaurants make it a better-than-average place to come and eat. Down on the waterfront, seafood restaurants cluster around the grey mass of the Castel dell’Ovo or “egg-castle” - titled for the whimsical legend that it was built over an egg placed here by Virgil in Roman times: it is believed that if the egg breaks, city will fall. Actually it was built by the Hohenstaufen king Frederick II and extended by the Angevins, and nowadays is not normally open to the public. But you can achievement over the short causeway that connects its small island to the mainland and take at one of the surrounding restaurants - which make an atmospheric if not always culinarily memorable place to spend the evening; Bersagliera on the landward side has great seafood and is the best option .

Tags: angevins, aragonese, axel munthe, bovio, castel nuovo, cholera outbreak, circumvesuviana, corso umberto, fish and seafood, fish market, fontana del nettuno, maria del carmine, nolana, palazzo municipale, piazza del mercato, piazza garibaldi, santa maria del carmine, swedish writer, traffic junction, triumphal arch