© Jeff
Matthews entry 2016
Naples Miscellany p.
64 (start mid-July, 2016)
links to all
Miscellany pages
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(July 15 - Photo
of the Day 40) - This is the
restored statue of Parthenope atop the San Carlo
Theater in Naples. It is the work of Antonio Niccolini
(1772-1850), the prodigious Florentine designer
and architect who spent much of his life in Naples
in the employment of the royal family; he is the
one who restored the San Carlo theater in 1816
after a disastrous fire and whose many other works
in Naples include the construction of the villa Floridiana. This
from album 3 at
this link. Click
here for a larger image and a link
to a short entry
on
the restoration of the statue.

(July 17 - Photo of
the Day 41) - Nice
morning, that's all. Cooler weather and low
humidity for a few days have cleared the air and
provided this view of the bay and the island of
Capri. The two large motor yachts behind the
sailboats are the same as the ones shown here.
(Click
here to compare with a
similar view just below on this same
page.)

(July 18 - Photo of
the Day 42) - Not Naples,
but Sardinia; that's close enough (Sardinia
index is here).
This photo is of the Tomb of the Giants at Su
Monte è S'Apre (just south of Olbia on the east
coast of the island), one of a number of such
group tombs from the Nuragic age (1600-1000 BC).
The dead were buried in the covered central
corridor (on the left). (Click here for a general
page on the megalithic structures of Sardinia.


(July 19 - Photo
ofthe Day 43) -I'd say,
"Get thee to a nunnery," but this place is for
men—the 1000-year-old hermitage of S. Michele di
Montenero, 30
km/20 miles east of Salerno in the
Picentine mountains. In an age so averse
to solitude, it's refreshing to know that
such places still cling to mountainsides;
it is wedged into a shell-like hollow 1000
meters (3000 feet) a.s.l. on the side of a
cliff overlooking the Trigento river
valley. It took friends of mine from
Napoli Underground (NUg) three attempts to
find it. Click
here for the full story of the
hermitage and for a link to an expanded
account on the NUg website of their entire
expedition.
(photo:
NUg)



(July 20 - Photo of the Day 44) - The San Martino hill seen from the roof
and northeastern turret of the portside Angevin Fortress. The
white building in front on the hill is the S.
Martino museum, the structure behind that is the
adjacent Sant'Elmo fortress, and the large green
area below it all is the San
Martino vineyard. The right-hand red roof at
the bottom of the photo is the Naples city
hall. This album 3 at this link.
Click
here for a larger image and a
link to an
entry on the San Martino hill.

(July 21 - Photo of
the Day 45) - This is the
Villa Cimbrone in Ravello. If you watch enough
old movies, you may see it sooner or later
(even if it's called something else). The
history of the villa parallels that of Ravello
and of the entire Amalfi coast; that is,
sumptuous villas, including this one, started
cropping up on the coast a thousand years ago.
Villa Cimbrone became a luxury hotel hosting
some of the juiciest love-affairs and most
famous personalities of the 20th century,
including E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, D.H.
Lawrence, the Duke and Duchess of Kent and
Winston Churchill. It was the setting for the
famous elopement of actress Greta Garbo and
conductor Leopold Stokowsky. This
album 3 at
this link. Click
here for a larger
image and a link to entries
on the Villa Cimbrone and
Ravello.

(July 22 -
Photo of the Day 46) -
This is one of the most remarkable pieces of
modern statuary in Italy—the
so-called Christ of Maratea. It is on
a hill overlooking the Gulf of Policastro as
well as the town of Maratea, itself, in the
Basilicata region of Italy, just past the
boundary of Campania as the coast starts its
long journey to the south. The statue was
designed by Bruno Innocenti (1906-1996) and
was finished in 1965. It is made of concrete
with a facing of white Carrera marble and
stands 22 meters/72 feet high. By virtue of
spectacular location, subject matter and size,
the statue is reminiscent of the one that
“everyone knows”—the Redeemer atop Mt.
Corcovado in Rio De Janeiro. There are important
differences, however. The
complete story and a view of the
whole scene from across the bay
are here.
(This photo ©
is not in my albums but comes
to me from William C.
Henderson, by whose kind
permission it appears on this
page.)

(July 23 - Photo of the Day 47) - Every once in a while, not just
old-timers but even quite a few new-timers,
convene and get all misty eyed about the good
old days before the unification of Italy (1861),
back when Naples meant the kingdom of Naples and
the Bourbon dynasty ruled the roost. This poster
is from a few years ago. It advertises the "XV
Traditionalist Conference of the Most Faithful
City of Gaeta" and is dedicated to Maria Sofia
of Bourbon, Bavarian-born princess and then the
last queen of Naples, certainly one of the most
fascinating members of any European royal
family, ever. The captions on the left read: the
Queen, the rebel, the woman of the south. The
backdrop shows the fortress of Gaeta, where she
and her troops made their "last stand" in early 1861. This photo is
from album 3 at this link. Click
here for a
larger image
and a link to
an extensive
entry on her
life.

(July 24 - Photo of the Day
48) - The Baia Castle is
at the extreme western end of the gulf of
Naples. It is built on centuries of earlier
structures going back at least to ancient
Rome. What we see here is an entire remake
from the 1500s under viceroy
Toledo. From his time until the
unification of Italy (1861) it was a major
bulwark protecting the western approaches to
the gulf. Today it houses the Museum of the
Campi Flegrei and manages the impressive underwater Roman
ruins just off-shore. This photo is not
in the regular photo albums (available here). See this link for a
map of the area and the entry on the castle
and museum.



(July 25 - Photo of the Day 49) - This is
an interior shot of the main post office. The
building is a good example of Fascist-era architecture
and design of the 1930s in Naples, a
sort of monolithic Art Deco style that was
termed Fascist Rationalism. The building was
opened in 1936. This
album 3 at
this link.
Click
here for a
larger image
and a link to
the entry
(with more
photos) on the
post office.

(July 26 -
Photo of the Day 50) - Comparison
& Contrast, if you like that sort of
thing. This photo is taken from the exact same
spot as the second photo from the top of this
page. The top photo was taken at dawn; this
one at sunset.


(July 27 - Photo of the Day 51) - This unusual building,
at least for Naples,
is named the Corte dei Leoni (Court
of the Lions). There is a stone plaque
embedded in the façade that reads 1922 in
Roman numerals; it also names the
Neapolitan architect, Adolphus
Avena (using the Latinized
version of "Adolfo") (1860-1937), one of
the foremost exponents of "Liberty" (Art
Nouveau) architecture in Naples,
although this pseudo-Renaissance villa is
somewhat of an exception. Beyond the
architecture, the villa is said to be
haunted! People take that stuff seriously
around here.
This photo is
from album 3 at this link. Click
here for a
larger image
and a link to
an entry with
all the spooky
details.


(July 28 - Photo of the Day 52) - The 1964 plan to create a new Civic
Center was a radical one for Naples, marking the
first effort at true skyscraper technology. The
Centro Direzionale follows the 1982
design of prominent Japanese architect, Kenzo
Tange, whose work includes the urban plan for
Tokyo in 1960 and, in Italy, the designs for the
Bologne Civic Center and Fair Grounds in 1975.
The Naples Centro Direzionale covers
more than one square kilometer set in the
Poggioreale section of the city near the central
train station. This
album 1 at
this link.
Click
here for a
larger image
and link to an
entry on the Centro
Direzionale
that includes
further
photography.

(July 28 - Photo of the Day
53) - The
Campania region of Italy has three gulfs: the
gulf of Naples at the top and then as you move
south, the gulfs of Salerno and then of
Policastro. We smote the sounding furrows (if
you don't count the sails and engine) for a 90-nautical-mile/166
km voyage from Naples to Scario at the beginning
of the gulf of Policastro. (Details of that trip
are here.)
There is a short straight coastline, a spur, on
the home stretch, where time itself just
disappears. It's a big beautiful
stretch of nothing but high cliffs and some
coastal caves near Camerota. The caves,
such as this one, are of extreme
interest to anthropologists because they show very
early signs of human habitation.


(July 29 - Photo of the Day 54) - This is one of the two so-called
"Russian horses" in Naples. Actually, there is
nothing "so-called" about them. They are the
real thing—the
statues were originally two of the four on
the Anichkov bridge over the
Fontanka river in St. Petersburg. Czar
Nicolas I gave them away as gifts: two
went to Prussian King Frederick William
IV and are still in the Heinrich von
Kleist park in Berlin. The other two
came to Naples as a gift to Ferdinand II in
1846.
This
photo is from album 3 at this
link. Click
here for a larger image
and link to a complete entry
on the statues, including a
large lithograph of the
Anichov bridge that shows the
statues that replaced the
originals.


(July 30 - Photo of the Day
55) - These columns are
an example of Norman-Arab architecture. They
are on the premises of the Villa Rufolo in
Ravello. Such architecture is very common on
Sicily, for example, but much less common
farther north. (There is an extensive entry on "The Arab
Influence on
the Italian
Renaissance"
at this
link.)
This photo is
from album 3 at this link. Click
here for a
larger image
and links to
articles on
Ravello and
the yearly
festival.

(July 31 - Photo of the
Day 56) - This is the
cyprus grove on the grounds of the church
of the Madonna of the Cypresses near the
town of Fontegreca not far from Caserta in
the mountains of the Matese
regional park, an area that contains
the highest karst lake in Italy (image of
that lake is
here). The complete story, with
additional photography, of the grove and
church is here.
This is THE END of Naples Miscellany p. 64.
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