NAPLES

Naples is one of my favorite cities, not so much the city for itself which is still beautiful and for its friendly but sometimes lazy inhabitants, but for the many beauties around Naples, the islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida and then to the south of Naples Sorrento and the Amalfi coast with Amalfi and Positano. Furthermore, the archaeological cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed by a volcanic eruption of Vesuvius which had a very significant visual impact on the panorama of Naples. But let's come to the city which is the third largest in Italy after Rome and Milan, which was the capital for centuries of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies governed by the Bourbons and reunited with Italy after Giuseppe Garibaldi's expedition of the Thousand in 1860. In fact, Naples, like Turin, which was also the capital of the Savoy kingdom of Sardinia, has the appearance of a capital which can be seen in the palaces, squares, and its museums and was, after Paris, the most populous city in Europe at the time of the Bourbons. Naples has a beautiful coastal road in the center that goes from the splendid Mergellina to Castel dell'Ovo, an old city castle on an islet with two towers and the remains of an old church and a queen's prison, a stone's throw from Via Caracciolo. Then the royal palace which hosted the Bourbons for centuries and next to it the Castelnovo or Maschio Angioino with the Palatine Chapel which preserves frescoes by Giotto. The Basilica of San Lorenzo Maggiori with underground excavations which have brought to light an early Christian church and other ancient buildings. The National Museum and the Archaeological Museum are both very rich and interesting. THE beautiful San Carlo theater which can accommodate around 1400 spectators. Another focal point is the enormous Piazza del Plebiscito where concerts and Neapolitan festivals are held, a stone's throw from the beautiful Galleria Umberto I with a famous café Gambrinus and nice shops. ​There are very lively popular neighborhoods in its narrow and lively alleys and Spaccanapoli a street that divides the city in two. There is a metro with beautiful stations that rival those in Moscow. There is a bourgeois district of Vomero on the hills where the wealthiest live. And always at the top there is a rich museum of artistically crafted porcelain. While down below there are many renowned pizzerias and let's not forget that the pizza, the most famous and eaten in the world is NEAPOLITAN! There is the Sansevero chapel which houses the famous statue of the Veiled Christ by Giuseppe Sanmartino created in the mid-1700s, very suggestive. Don't miss Via San Gregorio Armeno with the workshops of artisans who create original nativity scenes, always inserting new characters also taken from the news. Then there is an enormous underground Naples which has recently been rediscovered and relaunched in tourist itineraries and Naples has grown a lot from a tourist point of view and is positioned at the top in Italy after years of oblivion also due to the poor cleanliness of the city which subsequently good mayors managed to restore it. Underground Naples had been used by the Neapolitans to protect themselves from Allied bombing in the Second World War and there are also the ancient catacombs of San Gennaro which date back to the times of the Greeks who founded the city before it came under Roman domination. The Cathedral of Naples hosts the rite of the dissolution of the blood of San Gennaro. There is the beautiful island of Nisida near the coast, the Campi Flegrei with their solfataras, the seismic tremors, the phenomenon of bradyseism in the Pozzuoli area. And then the splendid islands that can be reached by vaporetto in a couple of hours from the port of Naples. First of all, the elegant Capri with its stacks, the Blue Grotto, its famous little square and the villa of the Roman emperor Tiberius at the top. Instead, Ischia is a spa island with many hotels that provide the service and heated outdoor swimming pools near Casamicciola where you can see smoke on the beach and you can cook eggs by placing them in the sand. There is also a large mountainous island connected to a bridge and various very beautiful locations and then Procida which when you see it from the sea makes your heart sink with its long front of colorful houses behind the port and we saw it in the film " the postman" with F. Noiret, Troisi. Then you must go to Herculaneum and visit its remains and its museum and even more so Pompeii which is an entire city excavated and discovered after two millennia which had remained buried under the hardened lava and revealed the beauty of the Roman villas with mosaics but also revealing the common life of its inhabitants. Finally the beautiful Amalfi coast which is one of the most beautiful places in Italy, Amalfi with its beautiful church which can be accessed by climbing a steep staircase in front of the beach, Atrani and Ravello with its famous lemon trees and its panoramic gardens and finally the pearl of Positano with its hills inhabited by colorful and panoramic houses that overlook the beach and marina below, a very fine place much loved especially by wealthy American tourists. There is a saying in Naples, you see Naples and then you die, you interpret the meaning, I am still alive after having seen it at least three times, one of which on the occasion of the celebration of the second scudetto, that is, the victory of the Italian football championship when in Naples played the famous Argentine player to whom the city named its football stadium. Last year Napoli won their third scudetto class="separator" style="clear: both;">