A cloudy day in Naples

On Saturday morning I get up and the weather is not so good... it's rainy, windy and cloudy. But never mind, there are a lot of things that can be done.

Before going out, I have breakfast in the B&B where our host prepares a lot of cakes for her guest: carrot cake, bitter orange jam tart, lemon cake, coffee plumcake and...the PASTIERA NAPOLETANA cannot miss!

First of all, walking along Via dei Tribunali, I approach the Cappella Sansevero, founded in 1590 and renovated in the 18th century, when the vault was completely painted and filled with statues to celebrate the virtues of his family's maidens. In the mid of the nave the sculpture of Veiled Christ is lying: it's something astonishing because you can really see the veil and the joints of the hands and feet so cleraly that you cannot believe it's a statue.

Soon afterwards we go back on Via dei Tribunali from where the tour to visit the underground part of the town starts and so we spend two hours wandering in a net of tunnels and tanks, that was opened at the beginning of the 20th century in order to draw from building material as tuff, to build acqueducts and galleries that represented a refuge during the World Wars.
Befor ending the tour, we are taken in private houses and old shops in order to see parts of an ancient Roman theatre that has been assembled in the "new" buildings.
It's lunch time and we resurrect to the day light... we have just visited a "basso", a kind of apartment whose entrance is right on the street; houses where poor people lived in the past and that were offered PIZZA FRITTA, directly from the Pizzaioli who sold them to the poorest and got paid after 8 days.
You can taste it in the street shops where they are on sale for few euros...

In the afternoon we take part to a guided tour of the Monastery of Santa Chiara: the cloister is full of decorations with majolicas where the main colours are yellow, green and light blue, the same colours of the sky, of the vineyard and of the lemon trees that grow all around.
At the end of the tour you can see an example of nativity scene that is very common in Naples: people start working at it in the month of May, so that on the following Christmas, it will be ready.
We go back to Via Toledo and we decide to reach the upper part of the town: the VOMERO thanks to the cable railway. This part of the town, founded in the 19th century, is full of great buildings, that look like more elegant even if it is said that it has lost the idyliiac character it had. We walk around Castel Sant'Elmo but we cannot enter because it's going to close, we will come back but in the meantime we take advantage of the wonderful view in front of us: Naples stands there, under our feet in all its grandeur.