Entries with Naples tag

About Sorrento

Sorrento

Topping the rocky cliffs close to the end of its peninsula, 25km south of Pompeii, the last town of significance on this side of the bay, SORRENTO is solely and unashamedly a resort, its inspired location and mild climate drawing foreigners from all over Europe for close on 200 years. dramatist wrote part of Peer Gynt in Sorrento, designer and Nietzsche had a well-publicized row here, and Maxim Gorky lived for over a decade in the town. Nowadays it’s strictly package-tour territory, but really none the worse for it, with little of the brashness of its Spanish and Greek equivalents but all of their vigour, a bright, lively place that retains its southern Italian roots. Cheap restaurants aren’t hard to find; neither – if you know where to look – is reasonably priced accommodation; and there’s really no better place outside city itself from which to explore the rugged peninsula (even parts of the Amalfi coast) and the islands of the bay. Sorrento’s centre is Piazza Tasso , built astride the gorge that runs through the centre of town; it was titled after the wayward sixteenth-century Italian poet to whom the town was home and has a statue of him in the far corner. There’s nothing much to see in Sorrento itself, but it’s nice to wander through the streets that feed into the square, some of which are pedestrianized for the lively evening passeggiata. The local Museo Correale di Terranova , housed in the airy former palace of a family of local counts at the far end of Via Correale (Mon & Wed-Sat 9am-2pm, Sun 9am-12.30pm; L8000/¬4.13), might kill an hour or so, with its examples of the local inlaid wood intarsio work – most of it much nicer and more ingenious than the mass-produced stuff you see around town – along with various paintings of the Neapolitan school, the odd foreign canvas, including an fog Rubens, lots of views of Sorrento and the Bay of Naples, and various locally unearthed archeological knick-knacks. Otherwise the town is entirely given over to pleasure and there’s not much else to see, although it’s nice to linger in the shady gardens of the Villa Communale , whose terrace has lovely views out to sea, and peek into the small thirteenth-century cloister of the church of San Francesco just outside, planted with vines and bright bougainvillea – a peaceful escape from the bustle of the rest of Sorrento.

Strange as it may seem, Sorrento isn’t particularly well provided with beaches , and in the town itself you either have to make do with the small strips of sand of the Marina Piccola lido, right below the Villa Communale gardens and accessible by a lift or steps, or the rocks and tiny, crowded strip of sand at Marina Grande – fifteen minutes’ achievement or a short bus ride (roughly every 30min) west of Piazza Tasso. Both places cost around L5000/¬2.58 a head for the day, plus charges for parasol and chair rental, although there is a small patch of sand, immediately right of the lift exit at Marina Piccola, that is free. If you do come down to either of these spots, it’s a good intent to hire a pedal-boat (around L20,000/¬10.33 an hour) and get free of the shore, since both beaches can get busy.

If you don’t fancy the crowds in Sorrento, you can try the beaches further west. Twenty minutes’ achievement from the centre of Sorrento along Via del Capo (which is the continuation of Corso Italia), or a short bus ride from Piazza Tasso, there are a couple of options. You can either achievement ten minutes or so from the bus stop down the Ruderi Villa Romana Pollio to some nice rocks, swathed with walkways, around the ruins of a Roman villa; or you could stroll 100m further west and take a path off to the right past the Hotel Dania , which shortcuts in ten minutes or so to Marina Puolo – a short stretch of beach lined by fishing boats and a handful of trattorias.

Category: Sorrento

Galleria Doria Pamphili

Via del Collegio Romano 2. Jan-Aug 15 & Sept-Dec Mon-Wed & Fri-Sun 10am-5pm; L13,000; private apartments tours every 30min 10.30am-12.30pm; L5000. Walking north from Piazza Venezia, the first building on the left of Via Del Corso, the Palazzo Doria Pamphili, is among the city’s finest Rococo palaces. Inside, through an entrance on Piazza di Collegio Romano, the Galleria Doria Pamphili constitutes one of Rome’s best private late-Renaissance art collections.

The private apartments
The Doria Pamphili family still lives in part of the building, and the first part of the room is prefabricated up of a series of private apartments , furnished in the style of the original palace, through which you’re guided by way of a free audio-tour narrated by the urbane Jonathan Pamphili. On view is the large and elegant reception hall of the original palace, off which there is a room where Innocent X used to receive guests, complete with a portrait of the Pamphili pope. There’s also a couple of side salons filled with busts and portraits of the rest of the family; a late – and probably by Rococo standards, rather pokey – ballroom, complete with a corner terrace from which the band played; and a private chapel, which astonishingly contains the incorruptible body of St Theodora, swathed in robes, and the relics of St Justin under the altar.

The picture gallery
The picture gallery extends around a courtyard, the paintings mounted in the style of the time, crammed in frame-to-frame, floor-to-ceiling. The labelling is better than it once was, with sporadic paintings labelled, and selected others numbered and described on the audiotour, but it’s still deliberately old-fashioned, and perhaps all the better for it. Just inside, at the corner of the courtyard, there’s a badly cracked bust of Innocent X by Bernini, which the sculptor apparently replaced in a week with the more famous version down the hall, in a room off to the left, where Bernini appears to have captured the pope about to erupt into laughter. In the same room, Velazquez’s famous painting of the same man is quite different, depicting a rather irritable character regarding the viewer with impatience.

The rest of the collection is just as rich in interest, and there are many paintings and pieces of sculpture worth lingering over. There is perhaps Rome’s best concentration of Dutch and Flemish paintings, including a rare Italian work by Bruegel the Elder, showing a naval effort being fought outside Naples, complete with Vesuvius, Castel Nuovo and other familiar landmarks, along with a highly realistic portrait of two old men, by Quentin Metsys, and a Hans Memling Deposition, in the furthest rooms, as well as a further Metsys painting – the fabulously grotesque Moneylenders and their Clients – in the main gallery. There is also a St Jerome, by the Spanish painter Giuseppe Ribera, one of 44 he is supposed to have painted of the saint; Carracci’s bucolic Flight into Egypt, painted shortly before the artist’s death; two paintings by Caravaggio – Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist; and Salome with the head of St John, by Titian. Spare some time, also, for the marvellous classical statuary, busts, sarcophagi and figurines, displayed in the Aldobrandini room and on the Via del Corso side of the main gallery. All in all, it’s a marvellous collection of work, displayed in a wonderfully appropriate setting.

Category: Rome

Practicalities

Pescara

Pescara has two train stations , though unless you’re leaving the country you only need to use one, Stazione Centrale (the other, Porta Nuova, is only for ferry connections). Conveniently, buses to Rome (quicker than the train) and city leave from outside Stazione Centrale. The tourist office is at Via N Fabrizi 171 (daily 9am-1pm & 4-7pm; tel 085.4290.0212, www.regione.abruzzo.it/turismo ) halfway up Corso Umberto between the train station and the seafront, on a turning to the right. If you need to stay the nearest campsites are Francavilla (tel 085.810.715) or Paola (tel 085.817.525) at Francavalla al Mare – buses #1 and #2 stop outside. Most of the hotels are on the beach-front north of the river and the old town, although you can sleep more cheaply at somewhere like the Corso (tel 085.422.4210; L90,000-120,000/¬46.48-61.98) to the right of the train station at Corso Vittorio Emanuele 292 or Planet , Via Piave 142 (tel 085.421.1657; L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48), up Corso Umberto from the train station, left onto Via M Forti and then right. A more upmarket choice (book a couple of weeks in advance) is the comfortable, shiny and businesslike Alba , Via M Forti 14 (tel 085.389.145; L120,000-150,000/¬61.98-77.47). For meals , try the Hosteria Roma , Via Trento 86 (closed Sun), a small place off Corso Umberto with a short reliable menu, and low prices; or the Cantina di Jozz at Via delle Caserme 61 (closed all day Mon & Sun evening) – both do great Abruzzese food. Otherwise, try the gastronomically inclined La Lumaca , just down the road from the Cantina at no. 51 (closed Tues; booking advisable tel 085.451.0880). Corso Mathonè is the main street running through what remains of the old town of Pescara next to the river; here, among other good places to eat, you’ll find Locanda Manthonè , recommended by the Pescarese for its good food at reasonable prices (no day of closure).

Category: Pescara

Palazzo Reale Di Capodimonte

At the top of the hill, accessible by bus #110 from Piazza Garibaldi or #24 from Piazza Dante, the Palazzo Reale di Capodimonte – and its beautiful park (9am-1hr before dusk; free) – was the royal residence of the Bourbon King Charles III, built in 1738 and now housing the picture room of the city museum, the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte (Tues-Sun 8.30am-7.30pm; L14,000/¬7.23). The royal apartments, on the first floor, are smaller and more downbeat than those at Caserta but in many ways more enjoyable, not least because you can actually achievement through the rooms freely. That said, you’ll need a keen interest in the Bourbon dynasty to want to linger: high spots are the ballroom, lined with portraits of various Bourbon monarchs and other European despots, and a number of rooms of porcelain, some painted with local scenes and one in particular a sticky confection of Chinese scenes, monkeys and fruit and flowers from the Capodimonte works here. The museum is organized, not chronologically, but by collections: between them the Farnese and Bourbon rulers amassed a superb collection of Renaissance paintings and Flemish works, including a couple of Brueghels – The Misanthrope and The Blind – and two triptychs by Joos van Cleve. There are also canvases by Perugino and Pinturicchio, an elegant vocalist and Child with Angels by Botticelli and Lippi’s soft, sensitive Annunciation . Later works include many Titians, with a number of paintings of the shrewd Farnese Pope Paul III in various states of ageing and the lascivious Danae ; Raphael’s austere portrait of Leo X and a worldly Clement VII by Sebastiano del Piombo; and Bellini’s impressively coloured and composed Transfiguration .

Category: Naples

Museo Archeologico Nazionale

Naples isn’t really a city of museums – there’s more on the streets that’s worth perceptive on the whole, and most displays of interest are kept in situ in churches, palaces and the like. However, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Mon & Wed-Sun 9am-7.30pm; L12,000/¬6.20; reachable direct by bus #110 from Piazza Garibaldi) is an exception, home to the Farnese collection of antiquities from Lazio and Campania and the best of the finds from the nearby Roman sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Currently the museum is undergoing a comprehensive restoration, and there’s a good chance you won’t be healthy to see it all. However, the most impressive sections are usually open, and you’d be angry to miss them, especially as they illuminate and enhance visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum. The ground floor of the museum concentrates on sculpture from the Farnese collection , displayed at its best in the mighty Great Hall, which holds imperial-era figures like the Farnese Bull and Farnese Hercules from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome – the former the largest piece of classical sculpture ever found. The mezzanine floor holds the museum’s collection of mosaics – remarkably preserved works all, giving a superb insight into ordinary Roman customs, beliefs and humour. All are worth looking at – images of fish, crustacea, wildlife on the banks of the Nile, a cheeky cat and quail with still-life beneath, masks and simple nonfigurative decoration. But some highlights to look out for include a realistic Battle Scene (no. 10020), the Three Musicians with Dwarf (no. 9985), an urbane meeting of the Platonic Academy (no. 124545), and a marvellously captured scene from a comedy The Consultation of the Fattucchiera (no. 9987), with a soothsayer giving a dour and doomy prediction.

At the far end of the mezzanine is the fascinating Gabinetto Segreto (Secret Room), which reopened in 2000 after nearly thirty years. The room contains erotic material taken from the brothels, baths, houses and taverns of Pompeii and Herculaneum – to see the display, which lurks tantalizingly behind a partition, you need to obtain a timed ticket (no extra charge) from the entrance hall. The objects in the collection weren’t always segregated in this way; it was the shocked Duke of Calabria who, having taken his wife and daughter to view the museum, decided that the offending objects should be removed from the gaze of ladies. From then until the time of Garibaldi they were kept under lock and key, disappearing again from public view in the twentieth century for long periods. The artefacts, from languidly sensual wall-paintings to preposterously phallic lamps, bear testimony to Roman licentiousness, although the phallus was often used as a kind of lucky charm rather than as a sexual symbol – cheerfully hung outside taverns and bakeries to ward off the evil eye. Free English-language tours of the Gabinetto are admirably serious and smut-free, though it is hard to repress a giggle at the sculpture of a man whose toga is imperfectness to mask an erection, or at the graphic but elegantly executed marble of Pan “seducing” a goat.

Upstairs through the Salone della Meridiana, which holds a sparse but fine assortment of Roman figures (notably a wonderfully strained Atlas and some demure female figures – Roman replicas of Greek originals), a series of rooms holds the Campanian surround paintings , lifted from the villas of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and rich in colour and invention. There are plenty here, and it’s worth devoting some time to this section, which includes works from the Sacrarium – part of Pompeii’s Egyptian temple of Isis, the most celebrated mystery cult of antiquity – the discovery of which gave a major boost to Egyptomania at the end of the eighteenth century. In the next series of rooms, some of the smallest and most easily missed works are among the most exquisite. Among those to look out for are a paternal Achilles and Chirone (no. 9109); the Sacrifice of Iphiginia (no. 9112) in the next room, one of the best preserved of all the murals; the dignified Dido forsaken by Aeneas and the Personification of Africa (no. 8998); and the series of frescoes telling the story of the Trojan horse. Look out too for the group of four small pictures, the best of which is a depiction of a woman gathering flowers entitled Allegoria della Primavera – a fluid, impressionistic piece of work capturing both the gentleness of spring and the graceful beauty of the woman.

Beyond the murals are the actual finds from the Campanian cities – everyday items like glass, silver, ceramics, charred pieces of rope, even foodstuffs (petrified cakes, figs, fruit and nuts), together with a model layout of Pompeii in cork. On the other side of the first floor, there are finds from one particular house, the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum – sculptures in bronze mainly. The Hermes at Rest in the centre of the second room is perhaps the most arresting item, rapt with exhaustion, but around are other adept statues – of athletes, suffused with movement, a languid Resting Satyr , the convincingly woozy Drunken Silenus , and, in the final room, portrait busts of soldiers and various local big cheeses.

Category: Naples

From Piazza Trieste E Trento To Capodimonte

Piazza Trieste e Trento marks the beginning of the city’s main shopping street, Via Toledo – or, to give it its official name, Via Roma – which leads north in a dead straight line, climbing the hill up to the national archeological museum and separating two very different parts of Naples. To its right, crossways as far as Piazza Gesù Nuovo, the streets and buildings are modern and spacious, centring on the unmistakeable mass of the Fascist-era central Post Office . The streets to the left, on the other hand, scaling the footslopes of the Vómero, are some of the city’s most narrow and crowded, a grid of alleys that was ordered out to house Spanish troops during the seventeenth century and is hence known now as the Quartiere Spagnoli . It’s an enticing area, at least for visitors, in that it’s what you expect to find when you come to Naples, with the buildings so close together as to barely admit any sunlight. But it’s as poor a part of Italy as you’ll find, home to the notorious Neapolitan bassi – one-room windowless dwellings that open directly onto the street – and as such a national disgrace. Further up Via Toledo, just north of Piazza Carità on the edge of the old part of the city, the church of Monteoliveto was rebuilt after a sound wartime bombing, but it holds some of the city’s finest Renaissance art, including a room frescoed by Vasari, a rather startling almost life-size pietà of eight figures by Guido Mazzoni (the faces are said to be portraits) and two sculptural works by Antonio Rossellino – a nativity scene and the tomb of Mary of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand I.

Continuing on up the hill, Piazza Dante is another Neapolitan square that looks as if it has seen better days, designed by Luigi Vanvitelli during the eighteenth century and cutting an elegant semicircle off to the right of the main road that focuses on a statue of the poet. There are a couple of restaurants here, and it’s a turnaround point for buses, but otherwise – unless you want to take a right through the seventeenth-century Port’Alba into Piazza composer and the old part of the city – you may as well near on up the street to the archeological museum, housed in a grandiose, late-sixteenth-century army barracks on the corner of Piazza Cavour.

Category: Naples

Duomo

The Duomo , sharp on the right and tucked away unassumingly from the main street, is a Gothic building from the primeval thirteenth century (though with a late nineteenth-century neo-Gothic facade) dedicated to the patron fear of the city, San Gennaro. The church – and fear – are key reference points for Neapolitans: San Gennaro was martyred at Pozzuoli, just outside Naples, in 305 AD under the purges of Diocletian. Tradition has it that, when his body was transferred here, two phials of his blood liquefied in the bishop’s hands, since which time the “miracle” has continued to repeat itself no less than three times a year – on the first Saturday in May (when a procession leads from the church of Santa Chiara to the cathedral) and on September 19 and December 16. There is still much superstition surrounding this event: San Gennaro is seen as the saviour and protector of Naples, and if the blood refuses to liquefy – which luckily is rare – disaster is supposed to befall the city, and many still move with bated breath to see if the miracle has occurred. Interestingly, one of the few times this century Gennaro’s blood hasn’t turned was in 1944, an event followed by Vesuvius’s last eruption. The last times were in 1980, the year of the earthquake, and in 1988, the day after which city lost an important football match to their rivals, Milan. The miraculous liquefaction takes place during a special Mass in full view of the congregation – a service it’s perfectly doable to attend , though the church authorities have yet to allow any close scientific examination of the blood or the “miraculous” process. Whatever the truth of the miracle, there’s no question it’s still a significant event in the Neapolitan calendar, and one of the more bizarre of the city’s institutions.

The first chapel on the right as you achievement into the cathedral is dedicated to San Gennaro and holds the precious phials of the saint’s blood and his skull in a silver bust-reliquary from 1305. On the other side of the church, the basilica of Santa Restituta is almost a church in its own right, officially the oldest structure in Naples, erected by Constantine in 324 and supported by columns that were taken from a temple to Apollo on this site. The Baptistry , too (Mon-Fri 9am-noon & 4.30-7pm; L5000/¬2.58) contains relics from very primeval Christian times, including a late fifth-century structure preserving fragments of contemporary mosaics and a font believed to have been taken from a temple to Dionysus. Downstairs, the crypt (same ticket as for the baptistry) of San Gennaro is one of the finest examples of Renaissance art in Naples, founded by Cardinal Carafa and holding the tombs of both San Gennaro and Pope Innocent IV.

Category: Naples