and Vomero hill, is the fashionable quarter most frequented
by foreign residents and visitors. A fine broad street, the Riviera
di Chiaja, begun in the close of the 16th century by Count
d’Olivares, and completed by the duke de Medina Celi (1695–1700),
runs for a mile and a half from east to west, ending in
the quarter of Mergellina and Piedigrotta at the foot of the hill
of Posilipo. In front lie the Villa Communale (first called Reale
and subsequently Nazionale) public gardens, the chief promenade
of the city, which were first laid out in 1780, and have been
successively extended in 1807, in 1834, and again in recent years;
and the whole edge of the bay from the Castel dell’ Ovo to
Mergellina is lined by a massive embankment and carriageway,
the Via Caracciolo, constructed in 1875–1881. The eastern
crescent includes by far the largest as well as the oldest portion
of Naples—the ports, the arsenal, the principal churches, &c.
The best-known thoroughfare is the historic Toledo (as it is
still popularly called, though the official name is Via Roma)
which runs almost due north from the Piazza (Largo) del
Plebiscito in front of the Palazzo Reale, till, as Strada Nuova
Di Capodimonte, crossing the Ponte della Sanita (constructed
by Murat across the valley between Santa Teresa and Capodimonte),
it reaches the gates of the Capodimonte palace. A
drive, the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, winds along the slopes
behind the city from the Str. di Piedigrotta (at the west end of
the Riv. di Chiaja) till it reaches the museum by the Via Salvator
Rosa. The character of the shore of the eastern crescent has been
much altered by the new harbour works, which with the wharves
and warehouses have absorbed the Villa del Popolo, or People’s
Park, originally constructed on land reclaimed from the bay.
The streets of Naples are generally well-paved with large blocks of lava or volcanic basalt. In the older districts there is a countless variety of narrow gloomy streets, many of them steep. The houses are mostly five or six storeys high, are covered with stucco made of a kind of pozzolana which hardens by exposure, and have large balconies and flat roofs. The castle of S. Elmo (S. Ermo, S. Erasmus), which dominates the whole city, had its origin in a fort (Belforte) erected by King Robert the Wise in 1343. The present building, with its rock-hewn fosses and massive ramparts, was constructed by Don Pedro de Toledo at the command of Charles V. in 1535, and was long considered practically impregnable. Damaged by lightning in 1857, it was afterwards restored, and is now a military prison. On a small island (I. del Salvatore, the Megaris of Pliny), now joined to the shore at the foot of the Pizzofalcone by an arch-supported causeway, stands the Castel dell’ Ovo (so called from its shape, though medieval legend associates the name with the enchanted egg on which the magician Virgil made the safety of the city to depend), which dates from 1154. The walls of its chapel were frescoed by Giotto; but the whole building was ruined by Ferdinand II. in 1495, and had to be restored in the 16th century. Castel Nuovo, a very picturesque building constructed near the harbour in 1283 by Charles I. of Anjou, contains between the round towers of its façade the triumphal arch erected in 1470 to Alphonso I. and renovated in 1905. It numbers among its chambers the Gothic hall of Giovanni Pisano in which Celestine V. abdicated the papal dignity. Castel del Carmine, founded by Ferdinand I. in 1484, was occupied by the populace in Masaniello’s insurrection, was used as a prison for the patriots of 1796, became municipal property in 1878, and is now a prison. The royal palace, begun in 1600 by the Count de Lemos, from designs by Domenico Fontana, partly burned in 1837, and since repaired and enlarged by Ferdinand II., is an enormous building with a sea frontage of 800 ft. and a main façade 554 ft. long and 95 ft. high, exhibiting the Doric, Ionic and Composite orders in its three storeys. The statues on the façade of the palace were erected by King Humbert I. in 1885, and represent the titular heads of the various dynasties which have reigned at Naples, beginning with Ruggiero the Norman (1130); followed by Frederick II. of Suabia (1197); Charles I. of Anjou (1266); Alfonso of Aragon (1442); Charles V. of Spain (1527); Charles III. (Bourbon) of Naples (1744); Gioacchino Murat (1808); and Victor Emmanuel II. (1861).
Naples is the see of a Roman Catholic archbishop, always a cardinal. The cathedral has a chapter of thirty canons, and of the numerous religious houses formerly existing very few have in whole or in part survived the suppression in 1868. The city is divided into fifty parishes purely for ecclesiastical purposes, and there are 237 Roman Catholic churches and 57 chapels.
Most of the churches are remarkable rather for richness in internal
decoration than for architectural beauty. The cathedral of St
Januarius, occupying the site of temples of Apollo and Neptune,
and still containing some of their original granite columns, was
designed by Nicola Pisano, and erected between 1272 and 1316.
Owing to frequent restorations occasioned by earthquakes, it now
presents an incongruous mixture of different styles. The general
plan is that of a basilica with a nave and two (Gothic vaulted)
aisles separated by pilasters. The western façade is of marble and
was completed in 1906. Beneath the high altar is a subterranean
chapel containing the tomb of St Januarius (San Gennaro), the
patron saint of the city; in the right aisle there is a chapel (Cappella
del Tesoro) built between 1608 and 1637 in popular recognition of
his having saved Naples in 1527 “from famine, war, plague and the
fire of Vesuvius”; and in a silver tabernacle behind the high altar
of this chapel are preserved the two phials partially filled with his
blood, the periodical liquefaction of which forms a prominent feature
in the religious life of the city. Accessible by a door in the left
aisle of the cathedral is the church of Sta Restituta, a basilica of
the 7th century, and the original cathedral. Santa Chiara (14th
century) is interesting for a fresco ascribed to Giotto (at one time
there were many more), and monuments to Robert the Wise, his
queen Mary of Valois and his daughter Mary, empress of Constantinople.
San Domenico Maggiore, founded by Charles II. in 1285,
but completely restored after 1445, has an effective interior particularly
rich in Renaissance sculpture. In the neighbouring monastery
is shown the cell of Thomas Aquinas. San Filippo Neri or dei
Gerolomini, erected in the close of the 16th century, has a white
marble façade and two campaniles, and contains the tombstone of
Giambattista Vico. Sta Maria del Parto, in the Chiaja, occupies
the site of the house of Sannazaro, and is named after his poem De
Partu Virginis. San Francesco di Paolo, opposite the royal palace,
is an imitation of the Panthéon at Rome by Pietro Bianchi di Lugano
(1815–1837), and its dome is one of the boldest in Europe. The
church of the Certosa (Carthusian monastery) of San Martino, on
the hill below St Elmo’s castle, has now become in name, as so
many of the churches are in reality, a museum. Dating from the
14th century, and restored by Fonsega in the 17th, it is a building
of extraordinary richness of decoration, with paintings and sculpture
by Guido Reni, Lanfranco, Caravaggio, D’Arpino, Solimene, Luca
Giordano and notably a “Descent from the Cross” by Ribera, con-considered
the finest work of this master. The monastery has been
transformed into a medieval museum, where many specimens
illustrating the modern history of Naples may be studied, and some
fine specimens of majolica from the southern provinces can be
inspected. The view from the south-western balcony is incomparable.
The marble cloister by Fonsega, though rather flamboyant in
character, is one of the finest of its kind in existence. Other churches
with interesting monuments are Sant’ Anna dei Lombardi, built
in 1411 by Guerrello Origlia, which contains some splendid marble
sculpture, especially Rosellino’s “Nativity” in the Cappella Piccolomini;
Sant’ Angelo a Nilo, which contains the tomb of Cardinal
Brancaccio, the joint work of Donatello and Michelozzo; San
Giovanni a Carbonara, built in 1344 and enlarged by King Ladislaus
in 1400, which contains among much other remarkable sculpture the
tomb of the king, the masterpiece of Andrea Ciccione (1414), and
that of Sergiami Caracciolo, the favourite of Joanna II., who was
murdered in 1432 (the chapel in which it stands is paved with one
of the earliest majolica pavements in Italy); San Lorenzo (1324),
the Royal Church of the House of Anjou; and, for purely archaeological
interest, the Church of Sant’ Aspreno, thought to be the oldest
Christian church in Italy, in the crypt of the new Borsa or exchange.
Persons interested in frescoes will admire those in the former monastery
at the back of the church of S. Maria Donna Regina and those in
the cloister of S. Severino and Sossio. A more ancient Christian
monument than any of the convents or churches is the catacombs,
which extend a great distance underground and are in many respects
finer than those at Rome. The entrance is at the Ospizio dei Poveri
di San Gennaro (see Schulze’s monograph, Jena, 1877).
Of the secular institutions in Naples none is more remarkable than the National Museum, formerly known as the Museo Borbonico. The building, begun in 1586 for vice-regal stables, and remodelled in 1615 for the university, was put to its present use in 1790, when Ferdinand IV. proclaimed it his private property independently of the crown, placed in it the Farnese collection which he had inherited from his father, and all the specimens from Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae, Puteoli, Paestum, &c., which till then had been housed in the palace at Portici, and gave it the name of Real Museo Borbonico. In 1860
