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Tuesday, September 20, 2022
It was another two church day. First we started with Chiesa di Sant’Anna dei Lombardi. It’s a lovely church on the edge of the old town. Construction was started in 1411. It was expanded by Alfonso II, King of Naples and was, at that time, a favorite place for the gathering of the Aragonese Court. The most recent modifications were done in 1798 and sponsored by Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilys. Parts of the church were heavily damaged during World War II and have subsequently been rebuilt.
There is a great deal of diversity in the chapels. Many are plainly from the Medieval period and some are from the early Renaissance. Quite a few of the older Frescos have been damaged and/or in need of serious restoration. Even so, the church has a number of works by well known Neapolitan artists and is a great place to visit.
One of the most interesting things on display is in the right transept. It is a series of life-sized terracotta figures known as the Lamentation Over the Dead Christ by Guido Mazzoni. Completed in 1492 the dramatic expressions on the figures are in stark contrast to the figure of Christ laying motionless on a slab. Originally the figures had been painted in bright colors but time has removed most of the pigment. Even so it is very impressive. We haven’t seen anything quite like it before.
As is typical you can visit the church at no cost. To help raise money for restoration efforts two of the chapels can only be visited if you purchase a ticket. A standard ticket costs €6.00 per person. We bought the €8.00 version which included a tour of the crypt (Credit cards are accepted). The two additional chapels are nicely decorated. One of them has an elaborate funerary monument carved in marble. One of the cherubs on top has been attributed to a very young Michelangelo.
The crypt, accessed from behind the main altar, was down a fight of stairs. There we saw a series of holes in the wall where bodies were drained over a period of time, just like we described at the Catacombs of San Gennaro. The bones were stored in a large room under the floor. All human remains had been removed.
We’ve walked past this piazza several times and never noticed the church – only the building next to the church, which looks like a monastery. When we arrived we checked it out. Today it’s the local police station but at one time it was the site of The Monastery of Santa Maria di Monteoliveto, which was closed in 1799.
Our next church was just a few blocks away. Santa Maria La Nova is no longer a church. It has been deconsecrated. Today it is a museum. Tickets are €5.00 per person. Credit cards are accepted.
When Charles of Anjou built Castel Nuovo in the early 13th Century he did so by replacing an existing church. As compensation the Friars were given new land to build another church. The new, Gothic style church, was completed near the end of the 13th Century. A series of earthquakes and other disasters caused the church to be completely reconstructed in 1587, this time in the Baroque style. It became a museum in 2006.
We entered through one side of the cloister and observed frescos on the walls and the vaulted ceilings and funerary monuments along the walls. We walked along one wall where several modern sculptures had been installed. We entered the building at the opposite end. We walked through several large rooms that had a combination of old paintings and decorations and a smattering of modern art. Eventually we came to a door which led us to the church and the main altar.
Behind the altar, where only the priests would have been, were huge, floor to ceiling frescos detailing the lives of several saints. Parishioners would normally not have seen these works as they would have been obscured by the large, ornate altar. We also had a great view of the entire ceiling. It was made of carved, gilded wooden frames that were filled with paintings. The chapels were beautifully decorated. Some were in the Medieval style and some in the Baroque.
For me, one of the most interesting things about the church was a story of one of the burials around the cloister. Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad III, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Vlad Dracul was an actual historical figure from Transylvania on whom Bram Stoker based his book Dracula. We visited the house where he was born in Sighisoara and we visited his so-called castle when we visited Romania in 2018 (Bran Castle wasn’t his castle, but he was imprisoned there for a few days). The story goes that when his gravesite was excavated no body was found. It has been surmised that when his daughter moved to Naples to marry she brought his body with her and he was interred in this church. Scholarly research has been done on the subject.
Up one flight of stairs we found a large meeting room and access to the roof of the cloister. Up another flight there were more modern works on display.
We had lunch at a cafe in the old town district. They had some interesting desserts. Deborah had a slice of a typical Neapolitan cake called Pastiera. It’s a heavy cake make from ricotta and flour. I had a slice of cake that had layers of cream, chocolate, and cherry and was topped with meringue. Like most Italian desserts it was not overly sweet but it was very tasty.
Wednesday, September 23, 2022
We went to Pompei. In 2016 we spent a week in Rome and decided to book a tour to Pompei and Vesuvius. A bus took us to the site and a guide waked us around for about 90 minutes. We didn’t get to see everything and we didn’t have time to see the museum at all. It always bugged us that we might have missed something. Today was the day when we would see it all at our own pace.
Nothing is ever easy. When we boarded that dreadful bus back from Herculaneum on Monday they never collected our ticket. We explained the situation to our ticket seller and he suggested that we use the ticket for the trip to Pompei. We purchased another ticket for the return. It may seem like we were trying to get away with something but we felt we were entitled to some sort of compensation and had originally planned to dispute the cost of the ticket on our credit card. This was simpler – NOT.
When we boarded the bus the ticket taker gave us a really hard time. She said we couldn’t use the left over ticket and that we had to buy another round trip ticket. After some back and forth we gave her the one-way ticket we bought this morning. She said we would have to buy another one-way ticket for the return trip.
Because of heavy traffic in the city the 45 minute bus ride turned out to be a 90 minute bus ride. When we finally arrived in Pompei it was an utter madhouse. The street was lined with restaurants, ticket sellers, tourists, and what was worse, tour groups. We managed to get a couple of tickets at a cost of €18.00 a piece (credit cards are accepted). A quick stop at a restroom cost us another €1.00 a piece before we walked down the street to enter the excavation.
Once inside we quickly went through some side streets to avoid the tour groups. They tend to be very loud and block up entire areas – and there were many of them. Fortunately Pompei is very large and we were able to get to some of the less traveled sections quickly.
Actually, the site was much larger than we remembered. We didn’t realize that there were multiple entry sites, too. Unlike last time we came in via the Porta Marina; it took us a few minutes to orient ourselves. The first time we basically went up one of the main streets and down another. That was it. Our map showed that the town is logically split up into five main sections. As is our way we slogged through each section one by one.
It turns out that there are several large amphitheaters. We also found an open air museum that specialized in ancient erotic art. Of course most of the best preserved artifacts have long since been removed to museums around Italy and around the world but we managed to find some statuary and some frescos that were worth our time. The forum area is centrally located, very interesting, and very popular. Since we were there they’ve opened a small cafe just on the other side of the Temple of Jove where you can purchase snacks and beverages.
We did, finally, get to go to the museum. It was much smaller than we thought it’d be but it was still very nice. They had a collection of the usual artifacts. Somewhat unique to this museum was the plaster casts depicting the final moments of a number of inhabitants, including a horse.
The one place we didn’t get to revisit was the brothel. When we walked past there was a huge line of people waiting to get in. By the time we got there it had been a long day and standing in line in the hot sun for 30 minutes was definitely not on the agenda. We can live with that.
We had an hour before the next bus back to Naples so we had some panini at one of the restaurants outside the entrance. We met a very amusing couple from Minneapolis who shared stories of their travels.
The ticket taker on the bus was the same woman from this morning. We kept our heads down and showed the other half of our tickets from Herculaneum. If we had purchased round trip tickets to Pompei this morning we would have been left with exactly the same stubs (the tickets have neither destinations nor dates on them – just the amount they cost, and trips to Pompei and Herculaneum cost the same amount). Easy peasy.
On the way back we realized why they really didn’t want to let us use the leftover ticket stubs. They never collect the stub on the way back and so everyone has a leftover that could potentially be used again and again.