Many Italian cities look back with pride to the days when they were
independent republics: Naples, on the contrary, remembers its days
as a royal capital, the brilliant administrative and political
centre of The Kingdom of The Two Sicilies, ruled over successively
by the house of Anjou, Aragon and Bourbon. Once 'the third city of
Europe', today it is one of the least visited of the continent's
great cities. The same bustling lively atmosphere and magnificent
buildings that one finds in Paris or London exist here. This book
is a topographical anthology which recreates for today's tourist
the drama, the history and the life of a city in buildings and
locations that still exist today. An indispensable companion, it
brings the past of Naples vividly to life for the traveller of the
present. Extracts from chronicles, memoirs, biographies, letters
and novels refer to the most important and beautiful buildings in
and around Naples, as well as the lives of travellers to and
residents of this famous city. This is a guide to the vanished
glories of royal Naples: the departure of the Borbone King Francis
II in 1860 as the Risorgimento movement brought about unification
of Italy. It records the turbulent and bloodstained days of the
Angevin Queens Giovanna I and II, and the revolt led by the young
fisherman Masaniello; the artistic life of the city that Petrarch
knew, where Caravaggio, Ribera and Giordano painted, and which
attracted such diverse visitors as Nelson and Lady Hamilton,
Casanova, Goethe, Mozart, John Evelyn and Angelica Kauffman among
countless others. The dazzling world of the royalty - their palaces
overlooking the legendarily beautiful Bay of Naples, their court
balls and ceremonies - is described as well as the pulsing,
overcrowded slums of the Spanish quarter and the seafront with its
tarantella-dancers, iced-melon vendors, pickpockets and throbbing
Neopolitan songs. Naples is still, as it always has been, a city of
challenging contrasts: sunlight and squalor, grandeur and decay,
gaiety and despair. Its slums and its crime-rate have deterred
many, but those who persist will discover, through this
illuminating guide, the hidden glories of this famous city.
General
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