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Naples
- Where is Naples located in Italy?
- What is Naples known for?
- How old is the city of Naples?
- What famous foods come from Naples?
- What are some important landmarks or sites in Naples?
- How has Naples contributed to Italian culture and history?
Naples, city, capital of Naplesprovincia,Campaniaregione, southernItaly. It lies on the west coast of the Italian peninsula, 120 miles (190 km) southeast ofRome. On its celebrated bay—flanked to the west by the smaller Gulf of Pozzuoli and to the southeast by the more extended indentation of the Gulf of Salerno—the city is situated between two areas of volcanic activity:Mount Vesuvius to the east and theCampi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields) to the northwest. The most recent eruption ofVesuvius occurred in 1944. In 1980 an earthquake damaged Naples and its outlying towns, and since thenPozzuoli to the west has been seriously afflicted by bradyseism (a phenomenon involving a fall or rise of land).
Naples is located near the midpoint of the arc of hills that,commencing in the north at the promontory of Posillipo and terminating in the south with the Sorrentine peninsula, form the central focus of theBay of Naples. To the south of the bay’s entrance to theTyrrhenian Sea, the island ofCapri forms a partial breakwater, visible from the city in clear weather and at times of impending storm but increasingly screened by polluted air from the industrial zone developed, since World War II, between central Naples and the Vesuvian slopes. Pollution also afflicts the waters of the port, obliging the more scrupulous practitioners of the immemorial Neapolitanfishing industry to withdraw ever farther from their native shore.
While the importance of Naples as the principal port of southern Italy is at last in decline, the city remains the centre of the nation’s meridional commerce andculture, beset by inveterate difficulties, and distinguished by anadroit and original spirit that retains many suggestions of the classical past and ofassimilated historical experience. Of all the cities of southern Italy with Greek origins, Naples presents the most striking example of a livelycontinuity. It is also perhaps the last great metropolis of westernEurope whose monuments,albeit often in decay, may still be seen in their popularcontext, without distractions of tourism or self-conscious commercialism.
SinceWorld War II, during which Naples suffered severe bombardment, modernization has increasingly altered the city’s setting and character; and a measure of long-deferred but often speculative prosperity is reflected in new suburbs now proliferating in once-rural surroundings. However, Naples remainsarcane and compelling, a city whose richness requires from the visitor time, accessibility, and some knowledge of the Neapolitan past. Its historic centre was designated aUNESCOWorld Heritage site in 1995. Pop. (2022 est.) 914,758;metropolitan area, 3,054,956.
Physical and human geography
The landscape
Description and climate
Generations of observers have described Naples as a vast popular theatre, adesignation applying as much to the city’s aspect of a tiered arena as to its animated street life. It may also be characterized as an immensepresepio, in evocation of the populous scene of the traditional NeapolitanChristmas crèche—the expansive natural setting being countered, within the town itself, by a congested vitality. In the shadow of Vesuvius, within the sweep of the bay, the Neapolitan decor is still predominantly one of moldering palaces in red or ochre and ancient churches in stone or stucco. Although the narrow old streets, teeming and traffic-ridden, clamber up hillsides topped by new constructions, few buildings in central Naples asyet rise more than 10 stories. Three fortified castles—two of them on the seafront and one on a central eminence—still define the city’s heart. At the picturesque, pale Castel dell’Ovo, the shoreline divides into two natural crescents.
The blond, volcanictuff, or tufa, of the region is much used in construction, as is the dark Vesuvian lava that paves the older streets. Magisterial use was also made, in past centuries, of the dark southern stonepiperno, seen at its most imposing at the Castel Nuovo. The city’s aspect of southern colours interspersed with evergreen groves of ilex, palm, camellia, andumbrella pine reflects a climate in which balconies are in use most of the year. High temperatures in July and August often exceed 90° F (32° C), while the damp, chilly winter isalleviated by many brilliant days. Winter temperatures rarely fall to freezing, and the snow occasionally appearing on Vesuvius is seldom seen in the town itself. The south wind, the sand-laden sirocco, intermittently brings a burdensome humidity, terminating in rain.
Layout and architecture
Suburban Naples incorporates the headland of Posillipo, which joins the city at the yachting port ofMergellina—signaled by the church of Santa Maria del Parto. The nearby church ofSanta Maria di Piedigrotta, centre of a now-diminished popular festival, is steeply overlooked by a smallparkencompassing the entrance to the Roman grotto called theCrypta Neapolitana. Thispoignant place also contains the Romancolumbarium known as the Tomb ofVirgil, and the sepulchre of theRomantic poetGiacomo Leopardi, who died at Naples in 1837.
From Mergellina, the seaside sweep of Via Francesco Caracciolo is flanked by the long, public park calledVilla Comunale, sheltering the Zoological Station and the Aquarium (the oldest in Europe), both founded in 1872. Along the inland border of the park runs theRiviera di Chiaia, marking what was once the shoreline. (The name Chiaia probably derives fromghiaia, denoting a shingle.) Still for the most part lined with handsome old palazzi, the Riviera di Chiaia was a favourite residential area for foreign visitors in the 18th and 19th centuries. The NeoclassicalVilla Pignatelli, constructed for Sir Ferdinand Acton in the 1820s, is now, with its period furnishings, a museum. Recessed incontiguous streets, the churches of Santa Maria in Portico and the Ascensione a Chiaia contain works of theprolific 17th- and 18th-century Neapolitan painters.
Above this busy littoral, the panoramic Corso Vittorio Emanuele unfurls northeastward around the lower slopes of the town, toward the labyrinthine zone of Rione Mater Dei. Higher still, the prosperousVomero district is served, like other upper areas of the city, by spiraling roads and a funicularrailway. Among the modern blocks of the Vomero, the early 19th-century Villa Floridiana—housing the national museum Duca di Martina, with a fine collection of European and Orientalporcelain and ceramics—is easily distinguished in its extensive park.
- Italian:
- Napoli
- Ancient (Latin):
- Neapolis (“New Town”)
Piazza della Vittoria—whose titular churchcommemorates theBattle of Lepanto (1571)—closes the sweep of Villa Comunale and leads inland to the fashionable shops of Piazza dei Martiri, Via Chiaia, and Via dei Mille. The waterfront road, becoming Via Partenope, passes along the ancient quarter of Santa Lucia—much altered since the late 19th century byland reclamation and monotonous construction and bordered on the seafront by some of the city’s best hotels. Beneath the spur of the Pizzofalcone quarter—the remaining fragment of the defunct volcano Echia and once the site of avilla of the Roman general Lucius Licinius Lucullus—a brief causeway leads to the seagirt Castel dell’Ovo, its ancient origins incorporated in amedieval fortress. On the bay’s second crescent, the eastbound road passes below the long, red flank of the Royal Palace and arrives at the foot of the mighty Castel Nuovo, which, with its round towers, dominates the main port on the one hand and, on the other, the large Piazza del Municipio.