Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/201

NAPLES 189 crossing the Ponte della Sanitk (constructed by Murat across the valley between Santa Teresa and Capodimonte), it reaches the gates of the Capodimonte palace. A new drive, Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, winds along the slopes behind the city from the Str. di Piedi (at the west end of the Eiv. di Chiaja) towards the continuation of the Toledo. The character of the shore of the eastern crescent is being rapidly altered by the new harbour works : about the middle of the curve lies the new Villa del Popolo, or People s Park, constructed on land reclaimed from the bay. The streets of Naples are generally well-paved with lava or volcanic basalt, which, however, renders them both noisy and slippery for horses. Side-pavements, where they exist, are usually narrow. In the older districts there is a count less variety of narrow gloomy streets, many of them steep. The houses throughout the city are more remarkable for their size and the solidity of their construction than for taste and elegance. They are mostly five or six stories high, are covered with stucco made of a kind of pozzuo- lana which hardens by exposure, and have large balconies and flat roofs frequently ornamented with flowers, shrubs, and small trees planted in boxes filled with earth. The castle of St Elmo (St Ermo, St Erasmus), which dominates the whole city, had its origin in a fort (Belforte) erected by King Robert the Wise in 1343. The present building, with its rock-hewn fosses and massive ramparts, was con structed by Don Pedro de Toledo at the command of Charles V. in 1535, and was long considered practically impregnable. Damaged by lightning in 1857, it was after wards restored, but it is no longer used for defensive pur poses. On a small island (I. del Salvatore, the Meyaris of Pliny) now joined to the shore at the foot of the Pizzo- falcone by an arch-supported causeway 800 feet long, stands the Castel dell Ovo (so called from its shape, though mediaeval legend associates the name with the enchanted egg on which the magician Virgil made the safety of the city to depend), which, dating from 1154, was for several centuries a place of great strength. The walls of its chapel were frescoed by Giotto ; but the whole building was ruined by Ferdinand II. in 1495, and had to be restored in the 16th century. Castel Nuovo, a very picturesque building constructed near the harbour in 1283 by Charles I. of Anjou, contains between the round towers of its fagade the triumphal arch erected in 1470 to Alphonso I., and numbers among its chambers the Gothic hall of Giovanni Pisano in which Celestine V. abdicated the papal dignity. Castel fdel Carmine, founded by Ferdinand I. in 1484, was occupied by the populace in Masaniello s insurrection, was used as a prison for the patriots of 1796, and became municipal property in 1878. The royal palace, begun in 1600 by the Count de Lemos, from designs by Domenico Fontana, partly burned in 1837, and since repaired and enlarged by Ferdinand II., is an enormous building with a sea frontage of 800 feet, and a main fagade 554 feet long and 95 feet high, exhibiting the Doric, Ionic, and Composite orders in its three stories. On their visits to Naples, Kings Victor Emmanuel and Humbert have usually preferred the suburban palace of Capodimonte, begun by Charles III. and completed by Ferdinand II. Naples is the see of a Roman Catholic archbishop, always a cardinal. The cathedral has a chapter of thirty canons, and of the numerous religious houses formerly existing thirteen have in whole or in part survived the suppression in 1868. The city is divided into forty-seven parishes (the boundaries of which are administrative and not topographical, so that different stories of the same house are sometimes in different parishes), and there are 257 Roman Catholic churches and 57 chapels. Most of the churches are remarkable rather for richness of internal decoration than for archi tectural beauty. The cathedral of St Januarius, occupy ing the site of temples of Apollo and Neptune, and still containing some of their original granite columns, was designed by Nicola Pisano, and erected between 1272 and 1316. Owing to frequent restorations occasioned by earthquakes, it now presents an incongruous mixture of different styles. The general plan is that of a basilica with a nave and two (Gothic vaulted) aisles separated by pilasters. Beneath the high altar is a subterranean chapel containing the tomb of St Januarius (San Gennaro), the patron saint of the city ; in the right aisle there is a chapel (Cappella del Tesoro) built between 1608 and 1637 in popular recognition of his having saved Naples in 1527 " from famine, war, plague, and the fire of Vesuvius "; and in a silver tabernacle behind the high altar of this chapel are preserved two phials partially filled with his blood, the periodical liquefaction of which forms a prominent feature in the religious life of the city (see JANUARIUS). Acces sible by a door in the left aisle of the cathedral is the church of Sta Restituta, a basilica of the 7th century, and the original cathedral. Santa Chiara (14th century) is interesting for a fresco ascribed to Giotto (at one time there were many more), and monuments to Robert the Wise, his queen Mary of Valois, and his daughter Mary, empress of Constantinople. San Domenico Maggiore, founded by Charles II. in 1285, but completely restored after 1445, has an effective interior particularly rich in Renaissance sculpture. In the neighbouring monastery is shown the cell of Thomas Aquinas. San Filippo Neri or dei Gerolomini, erected in the close of the 16th century, has a white marble fagade and two campaniles, and contains the tombstone of Giambattista Vico. Sta Maria del Parto, in the Chiaja, occupies the site of the house of Sannazaro, and is named after his poem De Partu Virginia. San Francesco di Paola, opposite the royal palace, is an imita tion of the Pantheon at Rome by Pietro Bianchi di Lugano (1815-37), and its dome is one of the boldest in Europe. The church of the Certosa (Carthusian monastery) of San Martino, on the hill below St Elmo s castle, has now become in name, as so many of the churches are in reality, a museum. Dating from the 14th century, and restored by Fonsega in the 17th, it is a building of extraordinary rich ness of decoration, with paintings and sculpture by Guido Reni, Lanfranco, Caravaggio, D Arpino, Solimene, Luca Giordano, and notably a Descent from the Cross by Ribera. One of the cloisters by Fonsega is particularly fine. A more ancient Christian monument than any of the convents or churches is the catacombs, which extend a great distance underground. The entrance is at the Ospizio dei Poveri di San Gennaro (see Schulze s monograph, Jena, 1877). Of all the secular institutions in Naples none is more remarkable than the national museum, better known as the Museo Borbonico. The building, begun in 1586 for cavalry barracks, and remodelled in 1615 for the university, received its present destination in 1790. Enriched by the Farnese collection, by all that was most valuable in Naples, and by everything that would bear removal from Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabise, Puteoli, Psestum, &c., the museum is unique as a treasure-house of Roman and early Italian antiquities. The collection of Etruscan and Italo-Greek vases is unsurpassed. Nor is the variety of objects greater than the artistic value of some of the items such as the Farnese Hercules, the Farnese Bull (Amphion and Zethus binding Dirce to its horns), the Dancing Faun (bronze), the statues of the Balbi (marble). For the rich libraries of Naples see vol. xiv. pp. 530, 548. The Club Alpino has a unique collection (25,000 volumes) of Vesuvian and seismo- graphical literature. The university of Naples is one of the oldest in Italy, having been founded by Frederick II. in the first half of the 13th century. It had fallen to insignificance under the Bourbons, but since 1860 it has rapidly recovered. It comprises five faculties (literature and philosophy, jurisprudence, mathematics, natural science, and medi cine), and is well equipped with zoological, mineralogical, and geological museums, a physiological institute, a cabinet of anthro pology, botanical gardens, and an observatory on Mount Vesuvius.