Fontanelle Cemetery
The Cemetery of Fontanelle is an ancient cemetery of the city of Naples called in this way for the presence in the past of water sources. The ancient ossuary covers an area of about 3,000 m2 while the dimensions of the cavity are estimated at about 30,000 m3. It is located at the western end of the natural valley of Sanità, one of the rioni of Naples richest in history and traditions, just outside the Greek-Roman city, in the area chosen for the pagan necropolis and later for the Christian cemeteries. For at least four centuries, the site has preserved the remains of those who could not afford a decent burial and, above all, the victims of the great epidemics that have repeatedly struck the city. In this area, located between the Girolamini valley upstream and downstream of the Virgins, were located many tuff quarries, used until 1600 to find the material, the tuff, in fact, to build the city.
The space of the tuff quarries was used from 1656, the year of the plague, which caused at least three hundred thousand deaths,[6][8] until the cholera epidemic of 1836. The cemetery is well known because here took place the rite of the “pezzentelle souls”, that is the adoption and care by a Neapolitan of a certain skull of an abandoned soul (called capuzzella) in exchange for protection. Every corner, every corridor of the Fontanelle Cemetery is full of history, anecdotes, legends and curiosities just waiting to be heard.
National Archaeological Museum
The National Archaeological Museum of Naples is among the oldest and most important in the world for the richness and uniqueness of its heritage and for its contribution to the European cultural scene. The origin and formation of the collections are linked to the figure of Charles III of Bourbon, on the throne of the Kingdom of Naples from 1734, and to his cultural policy: the king promoted the exploration of the Vesuvian cities buried by the eruption of 79 A.D. (begun in 1738 in Herculaneum, in 1748 in Pompeii). (started in 1738 in Herculaneum, in 1748 in Pompeii) and took care of the realization of a Farnese Museum in the city, transferring from the residences in Rome and Parma part of the rich collection inherited by his mother Elisabetta Farnese. His son Ferdinando IV was responsible for the project of reuniting in the present building, erected at the end of the 1500s as a riding school and from 1616 until 1777 as the seat of the University, the two nuclei of the Farnese Collection and the collection of Vesuvian finds already exhibited in the Herculaneum Museum inside the Palace of Portici.
From 1777 the building underwent a long phase of renovation works and extension projects, entrusted to the architects F. Fuga and P. Schiantarelli. During the decade of French domination (1806-1815), the first exhibits were created, and with the return of the Bourbons to Naples in 1816, it was renamed the Royal Bourbon Museum. Conceived as a universal museum, it housed institutes and laboratories (the Royal Library, the Academy of Drawing, the Papyrus Workshop…), which were later transferred to other locations in 1957.
The collections of the Museum, which became National in 1860, have been enriched by the acquisition of artefacts from excavations at sites in Campania and Southern Italy and from private collections. The transfer of the Picture Gallery to Capodimonte in 1957 determined its current appearance as the Archaeological Museum.
San Severo Chapel Museum
Located in the heart of the ancient center of Naples, the Sansevero Chapel Museum is a jewel of the international artistic heritage. Baroque creativity and dynastic pride, beauty and mystery intertwine to create a unique, almost timeless atmosphere.
Among masterpieces such as the famous Veiled Christ, whose image has gone around the world because of the prodigious “weaving” of the marble veil, wonders of virtuosity such as the Disillusion and enigmatic presences such as the Anatomical Machines, the Sansevero Chapel represents one of the most singular monuments that human genius has ever conceived.
An aristocratic mausoleum, an initiatory temple in which the multifaceted personality of its brilliant creator is admirably transfused: Raimondo di Sangro, seventh Prince of Sansevero.
Pio Monte della Misericordia
The Pio Monte della Misericordia is a monumental building in Naples located in Piazza Riario Sforza, along the decumanus major. Born as a lay charity institution, one of the oldest and most active in the city,[1] it houses a seventeenth-century church where is preserved the painting of the Seven Acts of Mercy by Caravaggio, one of the most important paintings of the seventeenth century, and other prestigious paintings of the same century belonging to the Neapolitan school.
 
The entire building was turned into a museum in 2005; some of the institution’s institutional rooms on the first floor display historical archive documents of fundamental importance in the life of the institute and also house the Pio Monte della Misericordia Picture Gallery, one of the most important private collections in Italy.
Spaccanapoli
“In the middle of the city opens via Spaccanapoli, a straight stretch of more than a kilometre, narrow and noisy, which divides the enormous agglomeration in two. It is the heart of this babel of history. Here Benedetto Croce lived and died”. The lower decumanus, which takes in the central area the official names of Via Benedetto Croce and Via Forcella, but is commonly called Spaccanapoli, is a road in the ancient centre of Naples and is one of the most important streets of the city. It is together with the decumanus major and the decumanus superior (decumani of Naples), one of the three main streets of the urban system designed in the Greek era and that crossed in all their length the ancient Neapolis.
Given its origin, it would therefore be more appropriate to speak of plateia and not of “decumanus”, a name from the Roman era which by convention replaced the original one. Between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, the lower decumanus became important both for the convents of religious orders and for the dwellings of powerful men who lived there.
The Decumano Maggiore – Via Tribunali and the splendid S. Gregorio Armeno
The decumanus major begins roughly from Port’Alba and Piazza Bellini (where there are the first Greek walls of the historic center of Naples) continuing to Via San Pietro a Majella and Via dei Tribunali, which intersects with Via Duomo and ends at Castel Capuano. The latter is the reason why the street has been called Strada dei Tribunali since the sixteenth century. In fact, the Capuano Castle, since the beginning of the sixteenth century, by the will of Don Pedro of Toledo, assumed the role of court of the city.
In the central position of via dei Tribunali you can find piazza San Gaetano, which rises on the area where in the Greek era the agora of the city was located, which then became the Roman forum. Also on the square, as evidence of this, there are the entrances to the underground of Naples and the excavations of San Lorenzo, which offer important remains of the Greek Neapolis.
Via San Gregorio Armeno is a street in the historic center of Naples, famous touristically for the artisan workshops of cribsThe crib tradition of San Gregorio Armeno has a remote origin: in the street in classical times there was a temple dedicated to Ceres, to whom the citizens offered as ex-voto small terracotta statuettes, manufactured in the nearby workshops.[1] The crib tradition of San Gregorio Armeno has a remote origin: in the street in classical times there was a temple dedicated to Ceres, to whom the citizens offered as ex-voto small terracotta statues, manufactured in the nearby workshops. The birth of the Neapolitan crib is of course much later and dates back to the late eighteenth century.
The Royal Palace of Capodimonte and the marvellous forest
The Capodimonte Museum is a museum of Naples, located inside the homonymous palace, in the locality of Capodimonte: it houses galleries of ancient art, one of contemporary art and a historical apartment. It was officially inaugurated in 1957, although the rooms of the palace have housed works of art since 1758. It mainly preserves paintings, distributed widely in the two main collections, namely the Farnese one, which includes some of the great names of Italian and international painting (including Raphael, Titian, Parmigianino, Bruegel the Elder, El Greco, Ludovico Carracci, Guido Reni), and that of the Neapolitan Gallery, which collects works from churches in the city and its surroundings, transported to Capodimonte as a precautionary measure from the suppressions onwards Simone Martini, Colantonio, Caravaggio, Ribera, Luca Giordano, Francesco Solimena).
Also important is the collection of contemporary art, the only one of its kind in Italy[3], in which Vesuvius by Andy Warhol stands out. The Real Bosco di Capodimonte was born as a hunting reserve that extends behind the royal palace for about 134 hectares with over 400 different plant species planted over two centuries. An uncontaminated green area overlooking the city and the Gulf of Naples.
Thanks to the mild climate and the work of renowned botanists, many rare and exotic species have been planted here, including camphor and camellias from Asia, magnolias and taxodas from the Americas and Australian eucalyptus. For its historical, architectural and botanical heritage, the Bosco di Capodimonte was named the most beautiful park in Italy in 2014.
