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Toledo
Known to locals as Maschio Angioino, in reference to its Angevin builders, this imposing castle is now used more for marital than military purposes—a portion of it serves as a government registry office. A white four-tiered triumphal entrance arch, ordered by Alfonso of Aragon after he entered the city in 1443 to seize power from the increasingly beleaguered Angevin Giovanna II, upstages the building's looming Angevin stonework. At the arch's top, as if justifying Alfonso's claim to the throne, the Archangel Michael raises his right arm to slay a demon.
Across the courtyard within the castle, up a staircase, is the Sala Grande, also known as the Sala dei Baroni, which has a stunning vaulted ceiling 92 feet high. In 1486, local barons hatched a plot against Alfonso's son, King Ferrante, who reacted by inviting them to this hall for a wedding banquet, which promptly turned into a mass arrest. (Ferrante is also said to have kept a crocodile in the castle as his pet executioner.) You can also visit the Sala dell'Armeria, where a glass floor reveals recent excavations of Roman baths from the Augustan period, with resin plaster casts of the skeletons also found here (the originals are in storage in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale). In the next room on the left, the Cappella Palatina, revolving exhibitions (some free) adorn the walls along with a few tiny remaining fragments of the famous Giotto pictures described by Petrarch.
Before climbing to the castle's first-floor gallery, with its beautiful Renaissance-era masterpieces, check out the magnificent 16th-century Cappella delle Anime del Purgatorio and its richly decorated gold-plated altar.
At the back of the courtyard are giant photographs of three Roman ships, wood amazingly intact, unearthed during recent digging of the nearby metro station and now hidden away for restoration. A few tour itineraries are offered, including one of the underground prisons and the terrace with its unrivaled views of Piazza Muncipio's Roman excavations.
Piazza Municipio, Naples, Campania, 80133, Italy
Sight Details
Rate Includes: From €6, tours €10, Closed Sun.
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Toledo
A leading Naples showpiece created as an expression of Bourbon power and values, the Palazzo Reale dates from 1600. Renovated and redecorated by successive rulers and once lorded over by a dim-witted king who liked to shoot his hunting guns at the birds in his tapestries, it is filled with salons designed in the most lavish 18th-century Neapolitan style. The Spanish viceroys originally commissioned the palace, ordering the Swiss architect Domenico Fontana to build a suitable new residence for King Philip III, should he ever visit Naples. He died in 1621 before ever doing so. The palace saw its greatest moment of splendor in the 18th century, when Charles III of Bourbon became the first permanent resident. The flamboyant Naples-born architect Luigi Vanvitelli redesigned the facade, and Ferdinando Fuga, under Ferdinand IV, created the Royal Apartments, sumptuously furnished and full of precious paintings, tapestries, porcelains, and other objets d'art.
To access these 30 rooms, climb the monumental Scalone d'Onore (Staircase). On the right is the Court Theater, built by Fuga for Charles III and his private opera company. Damaged during World War II, it was restored in the 1950s; note the resplendent royal box. Pass through three regal antechambers to Room VI, the Throne Room, the ponderous titular object dating to sometime after 1850.
In the Ambassadors’ Room, choice Gobelin tapestries grace the beige fabric walls and the ceiling honors Spanish military victories, painted by local artist Belisario Corenzio (1610–20). Room IX was bedroom to Charles's queen, Maria Cristina. The brilliantly gold private oratory has beautiful paintings by Francesco Liani (1760).
The Great Captain's Room has ceiling frescoes by Battistello Caracciolo (1610–16); all velvet, fire, and smoke, they reveal the influence of Caravaggio’s visit to the city. A wall-mounted, jolly series by Federico Zuccari depicts 12 proverbs.
Room XIII was Joachim Murat's writing room when he was king of Naples; brought with him from France, some of the furniture is courtesy of Adam Weisweiler, cabinetmaker to Marie Antoinette. The huge Room XXII, painted in green and gold with kitschy faux tapestries, is known as the Hercules Hall, because it once housed the Farnese Hercules, an epic sculpture of the mythological Greek hero. Pride of place now goes to the Sèvres porcelain.
The Palatine Chapel, also known as the Royal Chapel, redone by Gaetano Genovese in the 1830s, is gussied up with an excess of gold, although it has a stunning multicolor marble intarsia altar transported from a now-destroyed chapel in Capodimonte (Dionisio Lazzari, 1678). Also here is a Nativity scene with pieces sculpted by Giuseppe Sammartino and others. Another wing holds the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III. Starting out from Farnese bits and pieces, it was enriched with the papyri from Herculaneum found in 1752 and opened to the public in 1804. The sumptuous rooms can still be viewed, and there's a tasteful terrace that looks onto Castel Nuovo.
The newly opened Galleria del Tempo is a multimedia trip through the history of Naples, in the Bourbon stables.
Piazza Plebiscito, Naples, Campania, 80132, Italy
848-082408-schools and guided tours
Sight Details
Rate Includes: Palazzo and galleria €10; gardens €5, Closed Wed.
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Toledo
This church, simple and rather anonymous from the outside, houses some of the most important ensembles of Renaissance sculpture in southern Italy. Begun with the adjacent convent of the Olivetani and its four cloisters in 1411, it was given a Baroque makeover in the mid-17th century by Gennaro Sacco. To the left of the Ligorio Altar is the Mastrogiudice Chapel, whose altar contains Scenes from the Life of Jesus (1489) by Benedetto da Maiano, a great name in Tuscan sculpture. On the other side of the entrance is the Piccolomini Chapel, with a Crucifixion by Giulio Mazzoni (circa 1550), a refined marble altar (circa 1475), and a funerary monument to Maria d'Aragona by another prominent Florentine sculptor, Antonello Rossellino (circa 1475).
Piazza Monteoliveto 15, Naples, Campania, 80134, Italy
Sight Details
Rate Includes: Side chapels, oratory, and sacristy €6; Abbots\' Crypt €2, Side chapels, oratory, and sacristy closed Sun. morning
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Toledo
Designed by Catalan architect Oscar Tusquets Blanca and opened in 2012, this is the most impressive of the numerous Stazioni dell'Arte on the city's Metro Linea 1. First archaeological remains, then mosaics by William Kentridge, lead to a 165-foot escalator descending below Robert Wilson's glittering oval Crater de Luz. A 560-foot corridor, connecting the station to the Quartieri Spagnoli, is lined with light-boxes depicting Razza Umana (Human Race) by Oliviero Toscani. Lauded by both CNN and Britain's Telegraph, it also won a prestigious ITA Tunneling Award in 2015. Information on guided tours, and detailed descriptions of artworks in the Linea 1 and 6 stations can be found on the station's website.
Naples, Campania, 80133, Italy
Sight Details
Rate Includes: €2
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Following a revolution in 1848 Ferdinando II decided to build an escape route from the Palazzo Reale to the sea, under the Pizzofalcone hill, with work beginning five years later. The death of the king and political changes (leading to Garibaldi’s unification of Italy in 1861) meant the project was never completed and the tunnel lay abandoned for almost a century until World War II, when it was used as a bomb shelter. The visit begins with a descent of 90 steps to a series of large tuff chambers, excavated for building work in the 18th century and then used as water cisterns. A short passageway leads to the tunnel itself, which after the war was used as a pound for stolen cars and motorbikes, many of which are still here. The more adventurous can book a tour of the cisterns on a ramp. Note, the tour begins on Vico del Grottone 4, just off Via Gennaro Serra behind Piazza Plebsicito.
Via D. Morelli 61, Naples, Campania, Italy
Sight Details
Rate Includes: €10, Closed Mon.--Thurs.
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Recommended Fodor’s Video
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Toledo
The galleria was erected during the "cleanup" of Naples following the devastating cholera epidemic of 1884. With facades on Via Toledo—the most animated street in Naples at the time—the Liberty-style arcade with curvy glass and wrought-iron dome and vaulted wings, built between 1887 and 1890 according to a design by Emanuele Rocco, had a prestigious and important location.
Entrances on Via San Carlo, Via Toledo, Via Santa Brigida, and Via Verdi, Naples, Campania, 80133, Italy
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Toledo
Once the headquarters of the Banco di Napoli, this vast 20th-century building houses a small museum that's worth seeking out for its outstanding collection of 17th- and 18th-century paintings. Relocated from the nearby 17th-century Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano in 2022, the star attraction is Caravaggio's last work, The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula. The saint here is, for dramatic effect, deprived of her usual retinue of a thousand followers. On the left, with a face of pure spite, is the king of the Huns, who has just shot Ursula with an arrow after his proposal of marriage has been rejected. Free lunchtime concerts are sometimes held in the atrium of the palazzo.
Via Toledo 177, Naples, Campania, 80132, Italy
Sight Details
Rate Includes: €7, Closed Mon.
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Toledo
This small square 300 yards up the hill from Via Toledo is a shrine to to Napoli's all-time favorite soccer player, Diego Maradona. "The hand of God, the head of Maradona," quoth the famous Argentina-born superstar after scoring a much-disputed World cup goal against England. This sentiment and its ability to mix the earthly and fallible with the divine is also peculiarly Neapolitan. The south wall is dominated by a mural of the Argentine giant featuring his original Swarovski diamond earring. Painted by fan Mario Filardi in 1990 when Napoli won their second league title, it was given an overhaul in 2016 with the face subsequently retouched by Argentine street artist Francisco Bosoletti (whose mural Iside, inspired by Pudicizia del Corradini in the Cappella Sansevero, is on the west wall). When Maradona passed away in 2020, fans gathered here to pay their respects, as well as at the city’s stadium (now renamed Stadio Maradona), and the square has now transformed from a crammed parking lot to a colourful museum for the footballing hero, with pilgrims leaving photos, scarves and gadgets in tribute. There is another giant mural of Maradona in the eastern suburb of San Giovanni a Teduccio, painted by Neapolitan-Dutch artist Jorit in 2017.
Via Emanuele de Deo 60, Naples, Campania, 80132, Italy
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Toledo
After spending time as a parking lot, this square was restored in 1994 to one of Napoli Nobilissima's most majestic spaces, with a Doric semicircle of columns resembling St. Peter's Square in Rome. The piazza was erected in the early 1800s under the Napoleonic regime, but after the regime fell, Ferdinand, the new King of the Two Sicilies, ordered the addition of the Church of San Francesco di Paola. On the left as you approach the church is a statue of Ferdinand and on the right one of his father, Charles III, both of them clad in Roman togas. Around dusk, floodlights come on, creating a magical effect. A delightful sea breeze airs the square, and most days one corner becomes an improvised soccer stadium where local youths emulate their heroes.
Piazza del Plebiscito, Naples, Campania, Italy
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Toledo
Modeled after Rome's Pantheon, this circular basilica is the centerpiece of the Piazza Plebiscito and remains one of the most frigidly voluptuous examples of the Stile Empire, or Neoclassical style, in Italy. Commissioned by Ferdinand I to fulfill a vow he had made in order to enlist divine aid in being reinstated to the throne of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, it rose at one end of the vast parade ground built several years earlier by Joachim Murat. Completed in the late 1840s after 30 years of construction, it managed to transform Murat's inconveniently grandiose colonnade—whose architect was clearly inspired by the colonnades of St. Peter's in Rome—into a setting for restored Bourbon glory. Pietro Bianchi from Lugano in Switzerland won a competition and built a slightly smaller version of the Pantheon, with a beautiful coffered dome and a splendid set of 34 Corinthian columns in gray marble; but the overall lack of color (so different from the warm interior of the Pantheon), combined with the severe geometrical forms, produces an almost defiantly cold space. Art historians find the spectacle of the church to be the ultimate in Neoclassical grandezza (greatness); others think this Roman temple is only suitable to honor Jupiter, not Christ. In any event, the main altar, done in gold, lapis lazuli, and other precious stones by Anselmo Caggiano (1641), was taken from the destroyed Church of the Santi Apostoli and provides some relief from the oppressive perfection of the setting. On a hot summer day, the church's preponderance of marble guarantees sanctuary from the heat outside, with a temperature drop of 10 or more degrees.
Naples, Campania, 80132, Italy
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Toledo
The Lucchesi fathers built this church around 1640 in honor of the Swedish queen and saint who visited her fellow queen, Naples's unsaintly Giovanna I, in 1372 and became one of the first people to publicly denounce the loose morals and overt sensuality of the Neapolitans. The height of the church's dome was limited to prevent its interfering with cannon fire from nearby Castel Nuovo, but Luca Giordano, the pioneer painter of the trompe-l'oeil Baroque dome, effectively opened it up with a spacious sky serving as the setting for an Apotheosis of Saint Bridget (1678), painted (and restored in 2018) in exchange for his tomb space, marked by a pavement inscription in the left transept. Don't miss the sacristy with its ceiling fresco from the Giordano school.
Via Santa Brigida 68, Naples, Campania, 80132, Italy
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Toledo
Out of all the Italian opera houses, La Scala in Milan is the most famous, but San Carlo is more beautiful, and Naples is, after all, the most operatic of cities. The neoclassical structure, designed by Antonio Niccolini, was built in a mere nine months after an 1816 fire destroyed the original. Many operas were composed for the house, including Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and Rossini's La Donna del Lago. In the theater, nearly 200 boxes are arranged on six levels, and the 12,000-square-foot stage permits large-scale productions.
Via San Carlo 101–103, Naples, Campania, 80133, Italy
081-7972331-ticket office
Sight Details
Rate Includes: From €6, MeMus closed Wed. and Aug.
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Toledo
Sooner or later you'll wind up at one of the busiest commercial arteries, also known as Via Roma, which is thankfully closed to through traffic—at least along the stretch leading from the Palazzo Reale. Don't avoid dipping into this parade of shops and coffee bars where plump pastries are temptingly arranged.
Via Toledo, Naples, Campania, Italy
