Our Neapolitan Weekend, Part IV: Castle in the Sky

Pictured above: A view from the top of the Castel Sant’Elmo on Vomero hill.

Once we finished our purchases and said our “grazies,” Giovanni walked us down the street to the Castel Sant’Elmo, a medieval fortress dating back to 1275, from the era of Charles d’Anjou. After having a quick conversation with the man in the ticket booth, Giovanni handed us four free admission tickets, and explained to us that since we killed some time in his shop and now it was after 4pm, there was no charge (very good to know for the frugal tourist! Save some $!!) He instructed us to spend very little time on the bottom floor, and to take the nearby elevator to the top… up we went… and up… still going… fyi… the Castel Sant’Elmo has got to have the slowest elevator in all of Naples, in case you wanted to know. So once we got up there, it was clear the rumors were correct – the views of the city from the top were incredible. From up there, you could see the entire city and out over the sea, to the islands of Ischia, Procida, Capri & the Sorrento Peninsula. Additionally, we could see two US Navy ships at port in the bay, one of which was the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, the Navy’s oldest operating vessel, on its final foreign port stop before going back to the states to be decommissioned.

Now, I know I said that Vesuvio had some killer views, and yes, the views from the top of the volcano were awesome… but the views from the castle, with Vesuvio in the background, were just breathtaking. Like the summit of Vesuvio, there was a peaceful silence all around, so far removed from the constant horns, sirens, and the general hustle/bustle downtown. What all started as a whim to the castle turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the day – a chance encounter with a cameo maker in Vomero, who showed us his family’s beautiful work, then walked us through his city to take us to the Castel, where he got us free admission for some of the most priceless views of the city… I couldn’t have wished for the day to turn out any better.

Then tomorrow happened. Stay tuned this week for the next part of “Our Neapolitan Weekend!”

Some more photos I took from the top of the Castel Sant’Elmo can be seen below on flickr!

Snapshots from our Neapolitan Weekend

Castel Sant’Elmo, a set on Flickr.

Our Neapolitan Weekend, Part III: Why You Should Talk to Strangers.

Pictured above: Agate cameo pendant from Giovanni’s shop, the Cameo Factory De Paola.

After taking in the gorgeous spectacle, we decided to start making our way back towards the Montesanto metro station. Before I came to Naples, my friend Whitney bought me an excellent guidebook as a going away gift… and needless to say, I’ve read that thing over, over, and over again. One thing I came across in the guide was an article about the Naples Funicular lines. In case the word seems foreign to you, a funicular is basically a sort of rail cable car, that operates with counterbalanced ascending and descending cars. Excellent for a quick visit up or down some of the more hilly areas of the city, when I realized there was an accessible funicular in the train station, I was all over it. I recalled hearing somewhere that from the Castel Sant’Elmo, somewhere near the top of the funicular line, a person could experience some of the best views of Naples… so I convinced everyone to fly by the seat of their pants and trust me to go on an unplanned adventure.

Once we got out of the funicular, we found ourselves staring at a giant map of the area… which of course isn’t in English. So we are standing there, scratching our heads, trying to translate the giant map with microscopic Italian writing, when out of nowhere, a tall man in a nice suit comes up to us and asks us, in English, if we were looking for the castle. He says its right down the street and that he will show us the way. Now, I am not a very trusting individual… I’m one of those who usually keeps their guard up at all times with strangers. So as we walk, I start asking him all sorts of questions – I’m not nosy – I just want to get a feel for who the heck this guy is:

Name: Giovanni.

Where he lives: Vomero section of Naples (where we were.)

Only place he’s visited in the US: Florida

What does he do: He owns a cameo factory.

Cameo factory? Hmm. That’s interesting. Go on…

Giovanni continued to explain that Naples is famous for 3 things: pizza/pasta, Vesuvio, and cameo jewelry.

In case you aren’t familiar with the term, cameos are pieces of jewelry, typically oval in shape, commonly consisting of a portrait in profile or other images carved in relief on a background of a different color. A painstaking art form that requires a steady hand and a crap ton of patience, cameos of Neapolitan origin are known as some of the best examples of this method. Italian cameos are traditionally made from different types of seashells and coral, as well as gemstones such as agate and onyx.

Giovanni explained that he was a 3rd generation cameo carver, and that if we were interested, we could stop into his factory, which was on the way to the castle. Once we got there, it was such a pleasant surprise – more like a storefront and an artisan carving studio all in one; that day, I learned that Italians use the term “factory” a little loosely around here. The place was so interesting – Giovanni took me to his work bench, where he showed me his carving tools, shells, and other raw materials that he used to create cameos while explaining his technique, a method handed down to him from his grandfather. In a simple frame on the wall above the bench, was a faded letter from President Eisenhower, thanking Giovanni’s family for their work on “the lovely cameo” he had commissioned for his wife. Giovanni caught me looking at it, and smiled proudly as he told me about he loved to create beautiful things. It was obvious I was surrounded by a labor of love; looking around at all the glass cases throughout the shop, I simply couldn’t imagine the total amount of work hours it would have taken to produce so many delicately carved pieces.

Though meeting Giovanni was quite the serendipitous detour during our visit downtown, you know the adventure didn’t stop there… stick around for “Our Neapolitan Weekend, Part IV” I’ll be posting later this week! 🙂

 

Our Neapolitan Weekend, Part II: Is it a Church, or an Art Museum??

Pictured above: a view of the nave in the Cattedrale di San Gennaro.

Our Neapolitan Weekend, Part II: Is it a Church, or an Art Museum??

After our tour of underground Naples, we decided to go check out The Duomo di Napoli, or Naples Cathedral, down a few blocks from the Sotterranea. The Duomo is the main church of Naples, Southern Italy, and the seat of the Archbishop of Naples. Locally it is known as the Cattedrale di San Gennaro, in honour of Saint Januarius, the patron saint of Naples; however, its actually dedicated to the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Filled with art, relics from saints from around the world, and rich in both French Gothic and Neo-Gothic architecture, even the earth beneath the Duomo is sacred; back in the 4th century, when the Cathedral was first founded, it was built right on top of an ancient Greek temple dedicated to Apollo.

The patron saint of the cathedral, San Gennaro, was an Italian bishop martyred in Pozzuoli around 305 AD. His body was transported to Naples Cathedral around 400 AD. In the Chapel of San Gennaro, a silver reliquary bust in his likeness contains his head. In addition, the crypt altar contains two vials of San Gennaro’s blood, which famously (and hopefully) liquefies 3 times each year, known as the “Miracle of San Gennaro.” The earliest written record of the miracle dates from 1389. (For more info on the “miracle” & the Feast of San Gennaro, check out my 9/20/12 blog post.)

Regardless of your religious preference, if you have never had the opportunity to experience the sheer spectacle of a Cathedral, put it on your bucket list. The Duomo was the second Cathedral I have been in (the first was Durham Cathedral in England) and I gotta say, the sheer magnitude of art and ornate embellishments within these structures can almost overwhelm.

To see more photos from the Cattedrale, check out the flickr album below!

Snapshots from the Duomo (Naples Cathedral)

The Duomo di Napoli, a set on Flickr.

Our Neapolitan Weekend, Part I: The City Beneath the City

Photo above: Joe navigating a narrow path through the winding underground city beneath Naples.

So last weekend, myself, Joe, and a few friends decided to do some more sightseeing downtown and found ourselves mired in another spontaneous Naples adventure. It was such a busy weekend that I’m going to break it up into a few separate blog posts… otherwise you’d be reading this one for the next 20 minutes. So on to part one. Saturday morning, bright and early (ok, fine. It was 10 am. That’s early for a Saturday around here… Friday nights tend to go realllllly late) we hopped on a train for downtown. We got out at Montesanto station, and were promptly stopped by some guards at the station exit, who were telling us that we had the wrong tickets – the ones we had were only good for suburban areas, not for entering the downtown area. Well, I decided these guys were full of shit, and though I clearly understood what they were trying to say and that they were about to try and issue us each a 45 euro fine, I defiantly kept repeating, “Sono americano… non capisco… non capisco!” with a confused look on my face (thanks go to Ms. Greene for years of high school theatre on that on one) and frustrated the guards enough to basically say “screw it” and let us go through. We made our way to another station, this time a metro subway, to take us to our first destination – the Napoli Sotterranea, or Naples underground. A few blocks from the Duomo, or Naples Cathedral, this “city beneath the city,” is a 4,000 year old system of tunnels, caverns, aqueducts & passageways originally excavated by the Romans for tufa, a strong sandstone that was used as some of the main building material in the Naples area. 2,000 years later, the Greeks dug a sophisticated aqueduct system throughout the underground caverns. Hundreds of years later, after the water was drained during a cholera epidemic, stairwells and other access points were built to connect the surface city with the underground caves so they could be used for WWII air raid shelters. It was truly fascinating to go through the underground – the tour we went on took us through only

1 km (0.6 miles) of the almost 450 km (270 miles) of tunnels, and there were numerous times our tour guide advised that any claustrophobic tourists in the group might want to hang back from a few tunnels, some of which were my height (about 5ft) and so narrow that you had to inch your way through walking sideways. We were given candles to see through the dark path in front of us, and we made our way through the winding passages to a few ancient water cisterns and into an ancient underground theater, the latter of which was only discovered 7 years ago, now currently seated beneath the floors some cramped downtown street-level apartments. Its pretty amazing to know that beneath a crowded and ancient city such as Naples, there is a huge, expansive world below, with just as much character as the world above… certainly a must see if you ever visit the city.

Check out some photos from the Napoli Sotterranea on flickr below!

Snapshots from Napoli Sotterranea

Napoli Sotterranea, a set on Flickr.

Some visit to the famous “Napoli Sotterranea,” or Naples Underground!

First off, let me apologize for how long its been since my last post! I have been so busy lately, traveling and really settling in, I’ve spent so much time out and about doing things, which has thankfully given me a little bit of a break from being glued to the computer. So on to what I’ve been up to:

A few weeks back, I flew up to Newcastle, England, to meet up with a friend who bought a new Mini roadster convertible and accompany on the long drive back to Naples. Though the majority of our time was spent on the road, I got a great opportunity to experience nearly a week of what Northern England has to offer. From sightseeing in Durham, enjoying fish & chips in Whitby, to driving through the North York moors and enjoying my first “Full English” breakfast, I had a great time experiencing North England “off the beaten path.” At the end of the week, we traveled by what’s known as “the party ferry” to the Northern Holland port of IJmuiden, which took 16 hours. This ferry, this very large cruise-like ferry, is considered the “party ferry” because people often spend the 16 hr overnight trip drinking in the ferry bars before they arrive in The Netherlands for party weekends. Needless to say, there was little partying on this ferry for me. A storm kicked up, the ferry was pitching from side to side, and no sleep was had. In the morning, after a horrible, sleepless night, just bending over to slip on shoes was miserable – it was like being hungover and nauseated without even having the fun of a party the night before. Ugh. So once we arrived in The Netherlands, it was a ton of driving from there – Amsterdam, Belgium, stopping for the night in Germany (where there is no speed limit to drive on the autobahns,) then on through France (where the speed limit is enforced and my friend was promptly issued a speeding ticket,)on through Switzerland and into Italy. Of all the places I saw during our drive, two places stood out to me as being the most beautiful; the Swiss Alps – beautiful, rugged & pristine… it was just breathtaking, and here’s a fun fact: If you plan to drive into Switzerland, once you get to the border, you have to pay 40 euros for a 1 year Swiss motorways car permit – otherwise, you’ll be denied entry into the country by highway. Hmm. Charging people admission for entry… in this way, Switzerland sounds sorta like the Disneyland of Europe.

The other part of the drive that struck me as incredibly beautiful (and free to drive through) was Tuscany, with its rolling hills, cypress trees and olive groves as far as the eye could see. All in all, it was a whirlwind experience to find myself traveling through so many countries over the course of 2-3 days, but I am thankful to have had the opportunity at all… each country had its own special character about it, and its just so interesting to me that all these countries are so close together, clustered in an area smaller than the United States but all so different; from landscape down to language. Its sorta as if people in Texas spoke a different language from those in New Mexico, those of which also spoke a different language from people in Nevada – it was truly fascinating. Check out some photos from my England to Italy trip on flickr below! : )

Eurotrip1: England, Switzerland, a set on Flickr.

Some photos from my England to Italy road trip!