THURSDAY, JUNE 20
We looked down from our first floor window at the grime and unruliness of this Naples neighborhood; it was hard to leave the apartment.
And we didn’t leave until lunchtime when we returned to a small — only four tables inside and one outside — family restaurant on Via Tribunali near Via Duomo. We’d eaten there the night before as well. The pasta and sauces were so fresh and flavorful, cooked right next to us in the kitchen by the family’s mother.
Centro Antico, the old town, is scrappy and busy. Wealthy residents live in another area of the city called Chiaia, west of the Castello Nuovo, where we were heading. We walked down Tribunali to the Santa Chiara, the largest and most important church in Naples, and the first to be rebuilt after WWII. Naples has seen at least two devastating events in the 20th C.: massive bombardments during WWII, which destroyed this symbolically-charged church, and a plague that wiped out half of Naple’s population of 300,000 at the end of the 1600s.
Castello Nuovo is near the heavily trafficked, police-protected port. Ferries move in and out of it constantly. Large cruise ships dock for the day. A long wooden ramp connects the port to the street by the Castello Nuovo, crossing over the many lanes of traffic.
The Castello was built on Roman ruins, which are visible underfoot, through plexiglass, inside the “museum.” Charles I of Anjou began building the castle in 1279, but it was transformed many times after by the Argonese, Spanish, Austrians, and Bourbons. It’s now used as a civic center. A wedding was taking place while we were there.
The art collection is impressive, with exquisite examples of Italian paintings, many of which depict the lives of ordinary people…not just biblical stories. The Baron’s Hall, a massive, square stone room, has the most amazing star-shaped dome, once lit by candles in the vaults 28 meters high. It was also, and more importantly, covered with frescos by Giotto. Sadly those frescos were destroyed. Like most of Naples, the building is in a state of decay. Many rooms are simply vacant. We peered in one gated room, not open to the public, on the ground floor, with chairs and garbage piled inside.
The old, covered shopping gallery, Galleria Principe di Napoli, which is much smaller but as lovely as the one in Milan, has only a few stores, not upscale, but plans are in the works to make it a cultural hub. Shockingly for a building of it’s kind, MacDonalds is found here, and it’s the busiest spot of all.
Just outside the gallery is a more upscale shopping area, and moving closer to Via Dei Mille, the shops become increasingly upscale; the people on the streets, fancier; the buildings, larger and groomed.
It must have been past 7:00pm when we arrived at Pan, Palazzo della Arti. It looked closed, front desk abandoned, but the door was open so we entered. Some security guards watched us pass into the villa/museum where we were the only visitors. It felt both strange and great to be there alone.
Two shows were on exhibit, and we really liked the larger of the two — paintings by Elio Waschimps. He paints large, slightly disturbing, either extremely colorful or monochrome oils of child-like and dream-like images.
In an attempt to find the metro, we got seriously lost. Surprise, surprise. But as usual it took us to an area we may not have seen otherwise — the hill where the very rich live. A climb well worth it, with a view.
We had to take cab to get back to Centro Antico. That’s how lost we were.
