ITALY: NAPLES - DANTE PIAZZA, MARADONA, STREET ART, THE CHAPEL OF SANSEVERO, CHRISTMAS ALLEY, AND THE CHURCH OF SOULS IN PURGATORY

March 15, 2024

After a decent night of sleep, we met Chris and Stan for a mediocre breakfast in the hotel at 7:00 AM. We had 9:00 tickets for our first destination, and we had to figure out how to get there.

The streets are very narrow, and we were quite impressed by the parking job of the car below. We were also very glad we didn't have a car that we had to park. The ice cream visual on the right was tempting, but we couldn't be late for our first appointment.

This is the University Institute of Mediation. At first I thought that was "Meditation," and that those four guys holding up the balcony were deep in thought. 

It turns out they need someone to negotiate their release.

After a few mistaken turns, we finally found the subway. (It turns out that the GPS on our phones couldn't find its way around either.)  I took the picture on the left to remind me we had gotten on at the Uscita stop.  When I saw the same sign at every subway stop, I realized uscita means "exit." The subway was clean, efficient, and crowded.

It didn't take long to find something interesting once we got off the subway. Here are four VIPs hanging out together: Americans Bob, Chris, and Stan on the left and Italian Dante Alighieri waving to them on the right.

Italy loves its piazzas (maybe because the word is spelled almost like "pizza"). This one is named "Piazza Dante" after its famous stone resident.

The Port'Alba (below left) was built in 1625, which seems old, but then when you think about the fact that 1625 is the year New Amsterdam (later known as New York) was founded, then it seems REALLY old. The picture below right is the view on the other side of the Port'Alba gate.

This was the first place I saw this face, but definitely not the last. This is Diego Maradona, sometimes referred to as "The God of Naples." Maradona was an Argentine soccer player who played for the Napoli team from 1984-1991, starring in 188 games during that time. Judging by the number of times we saw his image, there has never been another soccer player like him in Italy.

Maradona died of cardiac arrest in 2020 at age 60.  Apparently he is still winning soccer awards in heaven. The sign below this image translates as "No one dies as long as he lives in the hearts of those who remain."  The phrases above angelic Maradona translate as  "a whiff of breath" and "one more moment."

The alley walls were covered with very interesting murals and posters, most of which had been further embellished with graffiti.

On the left is an Alphonse Mucha/Art Nouveau-style portrait with an interesting message and a weird blue guy under the girl's arm. On the right, Mary in a negligee and holding a cell phone is a bit strange.

These two are a little more straightforward. 

Unusual Mary-figures seem to be a common theme. This one is captioned "We Can't Breathe."

This is an ad for a vegetarian restaurant.

We eventually made it to our destination, the Chapel of Sansevero. It was in a most unlikely location, at the end of a long side alley crammed between old apartment complexes.

Raimondo di Sangro (1710-1771) was the seventh prince of San Severo (a municipality in Southern Italy) known for his interest in alchemy and mechanics. He dedicated the final years of his life to building and decorating this chapel. Though a relatively small room, at least compared to a cathedral, the chapel is filled to bursting with 27 marble figures and paintings by some of the best Italian sculptors and painters of the day. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos. The museum did give us a link to some digital photos, and I also borrowed a couple from the internet.

Picture from here.

Among the many sculptures, one of my favorites, Release from Deception (1752-1759) by Francesco Queirolo, shows a fisherman being released from a net by an angel. I wondered if the net rotted over time and how often they had had to replace it, but then I realized it was carved from the same block of stone as the fisherman's and angel's bodies. Unbelievable.

Photo from here

The reason we had scouted out this tiny chapel, however, was for the piece in the center of the nave: The Veiled Christ, carved from a single block of marble in 1753 by a young Neapolitan artist named Giuseppe Sanmartino. The following images are all from the museum website.

The translucent veil is so convincing that viewers of the day believed there was some kind of magic involved. Some speculated that the artist used some kind of alchemy to turn an actual piece of cloth into marble after it had been draped over the carved body of Christ. It just doesn't seem possible that it is carved from the same stone as the body beneath it.

There are those who believe this is the greatest sculpture of all time, surpassing even Michelangelo's work. I might still choose the Pieta over this, but The Veiled Christ runs a close second.

Back out on the street, we moved quickly from the sublime to the, well, political?

Then back to the sublime--at least food-wise. Aren't these sausages beautiful? I wish we had been able to cook some. I also loved the more sacred tributes to Mary that we occasionally spotted. But wait, who's the ridiculous figure in the blue shirt on the bottom? Is that my Dear Brother Dave?

And can anyone explain these VERY strange naked figures popping out of . . . something. Maybe tulips? Or are those the flames of Purgatory?

Our next stop was Christmas Alley, a pedestrian street with shop after shop of vendors selling nativities. I'm a collector of nativities from around the world, and I was very excited to visit this street. Wow, what a disappointment! Everything looked plastic and low-quality, and there wasn't much that was original. Nothing tempted either my sister or me. Maybe it would have been better if our expectations had not been so high.

A restaurant we had scouted out in advance of the trip was nearby, so we headed in that direction. Of course, there were more murals.

We found the restaurant next to an interesting church, The Church of Santa Maria of the Souls of Purgatory in Arco. The rock post at the bottom of the entrance stairs is graced with a skull that someone has named "Jack."  Jack, meet my Dear Brother Dave.

The church is dedicated to the cult of the Souls in Purgatory and was consecrated in 1638.

I found this interesting information on the church website:

"[I]n Naples . . . objects of worship become anonymous souls, those abandoned and nameless, those whose bodies, which had not benefited from the rites of a mourning, were buried in mass graves. The relationship is established through the adoption of a skull, which according to tradition is the seat of the soul, which is chosen, cared for, looked after and hosted in special niches. The pezzentella soul (from the Latin petere: asking to obtain), anonymous or abandoned soul, invokes the . . . alleviation of the sentence, and the person who adopted it, the person in life, asks for grace and assistance."

In other words, adopt a nameless skull to rescue a soul from Purgatory and get blessings in return. 

The painting over the altar depicts Christ rescuing souls from Purgatory.

Believers still participate in the cult today. They descend into a subterranean church beneath this one and adopt a skull of an unknown person to care for. In return, they ask for the soul attached to the skull for protection and favors. 

Photo from signage onsite

The most loved skull/soul is that of Lucia, whose skull is covered with a veil and a crown. Legend has it that she was a very young princess who died immediately after her wedding. She is the patron of young brides. Yikes.

Well, it turned out that our restaurant didn't open until 11:30. We had to be in Pompeii by 2:00 to meet our tour guide, so we figured we didn't have time to wait for the place to open, then eat lunch, then catch the train to Pompeii. We decided to try to get to Pompeii early and find something to eat there.