Strap in everyone, this is gonna be a long one. I left Spoleto in the wee dark hours of the morning and made my way down the narrow streets to the train station. Once the train started I promptly fell asleep and didn’t wake up until everyone had almost disembarked at Rome’s main terminal. I guess I was tired. I quickly got up and figured out where my connecting train was and about two hours later, I arrived in Naples around noon, found my hostel and started exploring. My first stop was Gallerie d’Italia in the Palazzo Zavallos, a really great art museum about a block away to get me started, and then I ended up in the shopping mall kind of on accident, the Galleria Umberto I. Even the shopping malls are beautiful in Italy.

Right next to that, I stumbled into the giant Piazza Plebiscito in front of the Naples Royal Palace, Palazzo Reale di Napoli. The first picture is from the Palace looking at Basilica Reale Pontificia San Francesco da Paola, say that five times real fast. The second is the palace from the steps of the basilica.

By now it was getting too late to do anything else, so I just kept wandering, towards the water to get my first look at the Bay of Naples and the Tyrrhenian Sea and BAM! There was Mt Vesuvius! I guess I didn’t realize it was so close and so visible from Naples, but there it is. This pic isn’t of my first view, but it’s one of the best I got. Amazing!

Ironically, a lot of the cool stuff to see in Naples is actually under Naples, in it’s vast network of underground tunnels. It was sometimes hard to understand the guides, but basically what I got was that they were mostly dug out in medieval times as cisterns and wells and later in 1943 they were used as bomb shelters. Naples was the second most bombed city in Italy during WWII, after Milan.

My favorite part was the collection of cars, motorcycles, and vespas used during WWII.

There was also a wine cellar underneath a church that the nuns secretly used to store their wine, which they claimed had healing properties. They said it would help women to have babies. Umm, I’m sorry, isn’t that true of all wine?

I was also surprised to learn that Naples has a Roman Theatre, that exists mostly underground. We ventured into a couple of nearby apartments that are under the remains of the theatre. Over the years more and more has been built on top, using the theatre as part of the structure and if you use your imagination while looking at a map of Naples, you can sort of make out where it was. We were told that part of the seating still exists above ground, but it’s in a privately owned courtyard and nobody gets to see it. Bummer!

Naples is a fast paced, loud, gritty, edgy, and thoroughly graffitied city. The whole place could use a colossal power wash. I don’t have any more to say about that, just thought I’d throw it in there. There’s no graffiti in this next pic, it was just a random cool thing I saw in the Centro Storico.

Back underground, below Complesso Monumentale di San Lorenzo Maggiore, a 13th century church considered to be Naples first medieval construction, are the incredible Graeco-Roman ruins of what was a big marketplace.

They were able to determine which room was a laundry, a bakery, a winery, etc. Just amazing! And it’s all at the bottom of an inconspicuous staircase just beyond the courtyard.

This is our last underground venture, then we’ll resurface, I promise. Saint Gennaro is a really big deal here in Naples. Most of his remains are in the The Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, but originally he was interred here in the Catacombe di San Gennaro. It was a very important burial place for many centuries. It’s crazy how many people were buried here. The bones are all gone now, but it’s a cool place to see with a lot of history.

As I said, San Gennaro’s bones now reside in the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, Naples main cathedral. It’s another giant church on a small street that I can’t get far enough away from to get it all in one pic.

In one of the side chapels, Capella di San Gennaro, locked up in the alter is a silver bust of St Gennaro containing his skull. Catholics love to keep lots of bones around. The 17th century chapel is beautiful, though, painted with scenes from St Gennaro’s life.

Right next to that is another small chapel with cabinets full of bones. No indication who they belong too. Catholics love to keep lots of bones around.

The rest of St Gennaro’s remains are underneath the main alter in the Cripta di San Gennaro in an urn. All joking aside, it’s a really beautiful place.

There are some really important works of art in Naples. Unfortunately, they’re all in different museums. You have to go all over town if you want to see them all. At the Pio Monte della Misericordia, for example, is what is considered Caravaggio’s most important work, The Seven Acts of Mercy. The picture didn’t come out as good as I’d hoped, but there it is.

I also went to see the Cristo Velato (Veiled Christ), considered to be the finest marble sculpture ever created, at Capella Sansevero. I don’t know about that, but it was pretty incredible! No pictures were allowed, though. You’ll have to book your own trip to see it. Anyway, a local doctor and saint, Giuseppe Moscati, who served Naples in the early 20th century is buried in Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo. People pray to him for health and healing.

One whole day was spent in only two museums during my stay here. First was the Museo di Capodimonte. It’s in the Palazzo di Capodimonte overlooking the whole city. Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, and many others were there. My favorite was probably the Michelangelo sketch of Venus and Cupid. Fantastic!

I also found some statues of two of my favorite Roman philosophers standing right next to each other. Awesome!

As a bonus I got a free piano concert in one of the big halls of the palace. That was an unexpected treat!

Next up was the Museo Archeologico Nazionale. This place was just massive! It never ended. Just when I thought I was finishing up, I would find another wing. I was pretty worn out, and hungry after that.

Arguably the most important section of the museum was the vast collection of frescoes taken from Pompei.

Here’s another quick random thing from the Royal Palace. I forget what it was actually called, but it’s a reading wheel, so you can read multiple books at one time. It’s the 18th century equivalent to having too many tabs open in your web browser. Ha!

Ok, I know you were worried about it, but no need to be, Naples has castles too, three in fact. One was closed indefinitely for renovations, but Castel Sant’Elmo which is this highest point in Naples was luckily open. There’s not much too see of the castle itself, but the views from the walls were tremendous.

Right next to Castel Sant’Elmo is the Certosa(charterhouse) di San Martino, which gave me a pretty unique view of Vesuvius.

The other castle, Castle Nuovo seen in the pic below, I got to kind of late and so I opted not to do the expensive grand tour. It is impressive from the outside though.

This last unique museum I read about online and had to visit to satisfy my morbid curiosity given my profession. This is the “some viewers may find this repulsive” section of the post. The Museo Universitario delle Scienze e delle Arti is hidden away in the anatomy department of the medical school and wow do they have tons of crazy preserved stuff in jars in that place! This is just a fraction of it, it’s a pretty big museum, but it’s definitely not for everybody.

In every country I’ve ever visited, at some point I get the craving and seek out an Italian restaurant. And there’s always one somewhere. Now I’m visiting Italy and I found myself seeking out a non-Italian restaurant. I never in a million years thought I would get sick of pizza and pasta, but here we are. Luckily, I found a good Chinese restaurant for a break. It was only a day and a half break before I was back on the pasta, but it was needed. Next I ventured out of Naples to see some ancient ruins. The first site I went to, you can probably guess, was Pompei.

Pompei is thought to have been originally founded in the 6th or 7th century BC as a prosperous Greek city. It became a permanent part of history in 79AD, however, when the neighbor, Mt Vesuvius, blew his top, literally!

The city changed hands a few times throughout it’s history and eventually became an important Roman city, so the ruins span a pretty long period of time and cultures. Being buried in volcanic pumice, while killing everyone in the city, preserved the buildings along with most of the frescoes pretty efficiently.

The site is huge and daunting, and if you can believe it, only about two thirds of Pompei has been excavated to date. I was told to allow three hours to explore. Yeah, right! I was there all day! I got there right after opening, around 9am and didn’t leave until around 4:30pm.

A massive amount of frescoes are in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, but not all of them. There are still a lot of frescoes left to see in the wild too.

Buildings and frescoes aren’t the only things that Mt Vesuvius left behind either. As I understand it, the people of Pompei primarily died from inhaling noxious gases from the volcano. Then everything got buried in ash, which eventually hardened into pumice. The bodies trapped in the pumice disintegrated leaving near perfect molds which they now use to make plaster casts of the victims. It’s a bit macabre, but unbelievably interesting too.

Not even the animals were spared. I wasn’t expecting this one.

Not far from Pompei on the western side of Vesuvius was the small fishing village of Ercolano. It suffered the same fate as Pompei in 79AD, was buried in pumice and mud and essentially fossilized for all time. It was also much smaller and easier to navigate than Pompei.

Ercolano also has it’s share of preserved frescoes and mosaics.

After visiting Ercolano, it’s an easy bus ride up to say hello to the volcano responsible for all this destruction, Vesuvius. It was closed the first few days I was here because of the weather so I wasn’t sure I would be able to do it, but I made it. Anyway, the bus takes you from the Ercolano train station up to a car park and then it’s an easy half mile or so hike up to the crater. It’s not a difficult or challenging hike in any way, but what a view!

The crater looks harmless now, but in 79AD, this bad boy shot plumes of destruction upwards of 15-25km into the sky. Holy crap!!! As you can see it still steams and that smell of sulfur is unmistakable.

And the views of the Bay of Naples are amazing! I can see Naples, Ercolano, Pompei, clear out to Sorrento and Capri!

Finally, we’ve reached the last place I visited while in Naples. We’re almost done. A quick one hour train ride from Naples took me to my rainy day visit of what ended up being my favorite site in the area, Paestum. It was founded in the 6th century BC by the Greeks and originally called Poseidonia in honor of the god of the sea. It later passed to the Romans and eventually was abandoned as the Roman empire fell.

Today, Paestum hosts three of the best preserved Graeco-Roman temples in the world. They are jaw dropping! The Tempio di Nettuno dates to the middle of the 5th century BC. The Tempio di Hera is the oldest of Paestums temples dating from the 6th century BC.

There’s also ruins from houses and shops, the Roman road and forum and an amphitheatre. The so called Ekklesiasterion is where public debates were held during the earlier Greek years.

The third temple at Paestum, the Tempio di Athena, also dates from the 6th century BC, but sits at the far end of the site from the other two.

And finally, the very big museum associated with the site, was closed. Boo! They did open a small section with some pretty amazing and surprisingly colorful frescoes taken from the site though. The most famous one was from a tomb called, the Tomba del Tuffatore (Tomb of the Diver). It’s thought that the picture is just a representation of the transition from life to death, but who knows, maybe the dude really was just a professional diver.

Holy Crap… we’ve reached the end of the post!!! I’m learning fast that it’s not just Rome, this entire boot shaped peninsula is freaking dense with stuff to see and do. Thankfully, I have an eleven hour train ride to my next stop to rest up for the next round. The next few stops should be a little more relaxed as well. So go grab a snack, rest those eyes, and I’ll be back in a few days…