Naples, Italy - It's More Than Just Pizza!

We left Malta in some fairly high winds and heavy seas, and it wasn’t until well into the evening that conditions improved marginally.

Big rock islands & gusty winds

At sunrise we found ourselves close to Naples and facing huge rock islands on our approach. It was still very gusty directly on the beam, and opening the balcony door to take some pictures practically blew the cabin apart.

"Totem Bella Donna Pace"

We docked around 1000 and the ship was cleared for disembarkation. Since our tour wasn’t scheduled to leave until 1300, we decided to do our own walk about the city.

With a history stretching back 2500 years, Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and was long a cultural center of the Greeks and Roman Empire.

Castel Nuovo

“Napoli” enjoyed 500 years as a powerful kingdom that attracted the finest artists and architects in Europe. As Italy’s third-largest city with a metropolitan population of around 4 million, Naples is one of Europe’s most important ports—a feature that led to it being the most bombed Italian city in WWII. Its historic city center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (as is almost anything we see anymore!).

Front of Castel Nuovo

The city lies between two volcanic regions, Mt. Vesuvius and Campi Flegri, and the Roman ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum that were destroyed in the 79 AD eruption of Mt. Vesuvius are visible nearby.

We began our walk at the cruise terminal monument Totem Della Pace (which we renamed Totem Bella Donna Pace after Jane’s cousin’s wife).

Glass-domed mall

We wound our way through an adjacent construction site that brought us to the Castel Nuovo, an imposing fortress on the water’s edge. Heading into what seemed to be the business district (judging by the increasing number of stores and rise in Jane’s heartbeat), we stumbled upon a very beautiful glass-domed shopping mall highly decorated with reliefs, sculptures, paintings, and beautiful mosaic floors.

Mosaic floor in mall

We walked for several blocks through streets lined with various shops until we came upon an open-air market. Jane was in her element. She purchased some linens and a scarf ring and was happy with the prices. Nearing lunchtime, we wanted to have some authentic Napoli pizza and eat it right on the sidewalk just like the locals do.

Piazza fountain

We found a great place right next to a police station and had a couple of slices of really good pizza and a beer. As we were leaving the café, we realized that the large open piazza that we had been staring at during our lunch encompassed a very elegant fountain that we had not noticed from our vantage point.

Detail of piazza fountain

We started back towards the ship, extracted some money from an ATM (the exchange rate has been very favorable), and arrived on the pier just as the passengers for this tour time were beginning to queue up.

Piazza del Plebiscito and Royal Palace

 Our tour was basically a panoramic bus ride to various highlights of the city which included Greek and Roman monuments, and Renaissance fineries. Because we had such a brief encounter with so many features as we did our drive-by, it was difficult to capture all of the names, history, and details that were being presented, so many of the images in this post cannot be accurately captioned.

Mt. Vesuvius (R) in background

One site we couldn’t miss was the Piazza del Plebiscito, considered the city’s grandest public square, and the adjacent former Royal Palace, but we just got a short glimpse of each as we rode by. We rode to an upscale seaside district more on the outskirts of Naples that is popular with summer tourists and stopped long enough for us to get off and take some pictures.

Wooden boat yard

The district was interesting, but what was really cool was a really good view of Mt. Vesuvius a short distance away. Also at this stop were a monument and a boatyard that contained only wooden boats.

Gesù Nuovo(L), Belltower, Santa Chiara(R)

Our bus dropped us off just outside of Old Town and we walked about 10 minutes to the Piazza del Gesù Nuovo. Here we viewed the exterior of The Church of Gesù Nuovo, but we couldn’t view the interior as it was not open. Instead we enjoyed a guided visit to the lovely cloisters of Basilica Santa Chiara Monastery, founded in the 14^th century by the king of Naples.

Majolica tile in cloister

The interesting features of these cloisters are the hand painted majolica tiles that line the walls, octagonal columns, and courtyard and the much degraded frescos cover the walls above.

Octagonal columns

Leaving the cloisters, we were shown the Spaccanapoli, a straight and narrow main street that traverses the old, historic center of the city of Naples and literally means “Naples splitter.” Here our guide left us and we had about 90 minutes of free time to explore on our own.

Spaccanapoli

We headed down one side of the Spaccanapoli while viewing the shops. Jane found a chocolate shop and bought some Italian chocolate; the “finest in the world” (and something we here everywhere we go!). We returned to the Piazza del Gesù and proceeded in the opposite direction for a few blocks to see carbon copies of stores from the other side.

Cloister frescoes

We returned to the piazza to wait for our group to assemble and return to the bus. Jane noticed that the doors of The Church of Gesù Nuovo had opened and people were entering. Capt. Larry went in to check it out and sure enough a mass was beginning.

Church of Gesù Nuovo

He signaled for Jane to come in and we viewed this magnificent baroque-style church until it was time for our group to leave for the bus. We caught up with them and returned to the ship, but were really glad we got to see this church. Back on board we returned to the Italian specialty restaurant and had a great dinner with a shared table with three other passengers. Our ship stayed in port until 0200 when we set sail for Civitacheccia, the seaside port for Rome. Tomorrow was going to be great!