Click here to see the full post on the web with pictures.
Friday, September 9, 2022
Another day, another museum. This time it was Gallerie d’Italia – Napoli. The collection is housed in a beautiful, modern building with marble staircases. It even has climate control. Their collection was distributed over three floors and contained some really fine works. In fact, most of the paintings were beautifully lit and were in such good condition that they’d probably undergone full restoration.
The ground floor contained a variety of periods. There were a great many from the Medieval period but they also had artifacts from Ancient Greece, early Renaissance tapestries and some gorgeous illuminated sacred works. It was nice to see that all of the works were clearly, and completely labeled – something that has been lacking in some of the other local museums.
The second floor contained paintings starting with the Renaissance and continued until the early 20th Century. There was a huge collection of paintings, drawings, and sculpture from an Italian artist we’d never seen before named Vincenzo Gemito. He worked mainly around the turn of the last century. He did a number of self portraits and, as usual, were some of the artist’s best work.
According to the museum’s literature the star of the entire collection was a painting by Caravaggio entitled, “The Martyrdom of Saint Ursala”, 1610. We’ve seen quite a few Caravaggios in our travels. We didn’t think this was one of his best.
The third floor was quite odd. It started with very modern works. There were two pieces by Andy Warhol that depicted Vesuvius blowing its top. The other part of the floor was dedicated to ancient Greek works. It contained mostly Kraters (large vases / wine jugs) from the 3rd Century BC.
One of my favorite works was a large marble sculpture of Atlas holding up a large globe. It was on display in the entry way. We hadn’t noticed it until we were on our way out. It is part of the Farnese Collection and was on loan from the Archeological Museum. No doubt it was one of the pieces that Pope Paul III had stolen.
By far this was one of the nicer museums we’ve seen here in Naples. It had a very high quality collection and was displayed in a lovely setting. At €7.00 per person it is a must see attraction.
We’ve been on the lookout for some Torte Caprese. It’s a speciality of this area. It’s said to be crispy on the outside, chewy in the inside, and very gooey. The closest analogy would be a flourless chocolate cake. We’ve found a few shops that sell whole cakes, ranging between €20 – 25, but we wanted to try a single slice first. Today we found a shop that made mini versions that were perfect for tasting. They also had them in lemon. We bought two chocolate and two lemon. They were to be dessert for tonight’s dinner.
After a dinner of gnocchi with pesto sauce we couldn’t wait to take our desserts out for a test run. We cut one of each in half so we could each sample them. We started with the lemon. It was sweet and had a mild lemon flavor. The inside, however, seemed like just plain cake. There was no way that this was flourless. There was also a distinct aftertaste of coconut. The chocolate was similarly disappointing with an even stronger coconut flavor. We’re glad we did’t spend the money on an entire cake. Maybe we’ll try it again when we go to Capri.
Saturday, September 10, 2022
We had intended to do a church crawl but by the time we finished breakfast it was raining pretty hard. We wound up having lunch in the apartment and then went out and walked around parts of the city we hadn’t already seen. We bit the bullet and started out by going UP the hill.
We’ve been going to a grocery store down the hill called Ciro Amodio. Apparently there is another one up the hill. This new one is even smaller than the old one (that’s pretty hard to believe), but it had some different items. When we got to the main road we found another, larger Italian chain called Carrefour. It’s much more in the size, and style of an American grocery store. We took a good look around. Next time we need groceries we just might brave the hill and come here instead. We walked out with a jar of Amarena (Italian sour cherry) preserves.
Just up the block there was an incredible view of the harbor, Vesuvius, and the city below. We walked down some winding stairs until we got to a very residential district. We followed along until we got to an outdoor market. There were all sorts of incredible goodies there. We bought a spaghetti pie from one shop; it was piping hot and smelled so good we wanted to eat it while we walked. Fish mongers were everywhere. We stopped into a few salumerias to check things out and shockingly walked away with nothing. The smell from the bread shop was so overwhelming that we walked away with a fresh, hot loaf. Down the street we found a bakery with almond horns. We walked away with a some orange and some pistachio flavored ones.
It was tough not stopping along the way back for some granita or gelato but we were anxious to get back to the apartment to feast on what we’d gotten.
Sunday, September 11, 2022
Another day of walking around and exploring neighborhoods. This time we headed down to the waterfront and strolled along the Gulf of Naples. It was a pretty sight. There were plenty of boats out on the water and Vesuvius was clearly visible in the clear skies. The Neapolitans were out in numbers taking their Sunday passeggiata (stroll).
First we came to Castel Dell’Ovo and after that a park with the remnants of some ancient columns. Further down we came to a set of stairs that led to the water’s edge. It was a sight to see. There were two large stairs that led into the water. Dozens of people were swimming in the waters and sunning themselves on the nearby rocks. A hundred yards further and you could see people fishing off of those same rocks. When we were there no one had caught anything yet.
Past Castel Nuovo we finally came to the docks where three enormous cruise ships were sitting. Hundreds of passengers were disembarking. To avoid the crowds we changed course and took a street one block away that paralleled the water. We continued on for a while. It was fun to see other parts of the city. This part was obviously geared to servicing the cruise ship passengers. Finally, in the distance, we saw a large statue. We knew it sat in the Piazza del Gesu Nuovo. We knew exactly where we were.
We headed to a nearby outdoor market where we got lunch: a paper cone filled with fried fish. It contained sardines, shrimp, calamari, fish, and fried dough. The sardines were served whole and really didn’t do it for us. We should have tried removing their heads first to see if that would have been better. The rest of the fish was absolutely delicious. It was prepared simply with a light breading and some sea salt.
We ate the rest of the almond horns with our dinner back at the apartment.
