The alarm goes off at 7.00, while it’s still dark and raining outside. The only thing we reserved this trip is today at 9:30: the Sansevero chapel so Olga can view the marble statue of the veiled Jesus.
As we exit our home at 7:45, it starts to rain again and an even bigger rainfront can be seen in the distance. So Tim quickly runs back for the umbrella and we still make it in time to the train. The station is just a platform with no information, but the train comes on time and brings us into Naples. There, we see the final blue sky of the day. We change into the metro system, it’s a ten minute wait which seems long but then after 5 minutes it changes into a 20 minute wait. As we are eager to get going we decide to walk since it’s just one stop anyways.
We walk along a long narrow street with classical Neapolitan scenes in all the side streets, laundry hanging in the small alleyways, high old apartment blocks and mural and flags of the Saviour, no not Jesus but Maradonna. The street is lined with souvenir and Christmas stalls. Ever so often a baroque church façade peeks around the corner.
After 15 minutes, at 9:30 sharp, we arrive at the Sansevero Chapel. Olga visits with kids, as we only reserved one ticket. The chapel is very small, the veiled Jesus Olga remembers from art lessons in high school is in real life just as impressive as on the pictures. Unbelievable that it’s all in marble.
There are 30 statutes in the chapel, two more catch our eye. A veiled woman (Pudicizia) and a fisherman being released from a net, which is also surreal art work, unbelievable it’s all made from marble (yes we say it again, as it’s true).
It’s another 15 minute walk to the archeological museum. It starts raining, and the rain will not stop for the rest of the day. We can access the museum for « free » with our passes, we can even skip the line. We recommend this pass to everybody visiting Naples! Before we dive into endless rooms of marble statutes, mosaics and frescos from the Greek, Roman and Renaissance, we take a coffee stop in the museum cafe to recharge for what will be coming.
The museum has an impressive collection, but not much logic, as we start with room 39, and quickly get lost. We start with the marble and bronze pieces, and they are impressive. All gods from Greek mythology pass the revue, such as the oldest extant depiction of Atlas, Hercules and the Farnese Bull, the largest single sculpture ever recovered from antiquity.
We quickly walk through the Egyptian collection, which includes a croccodile mummy.
We continue with the frescos. It’s a pity not to see them in the houses like we did yesterday, but the paintings are better preserved, more impressive, depicting beautiful and also funny scenes.
The kids are a bit done with it when we arrive at the mosaics, but these are also stunning. The amount of detail is impressive and the scenes are informative, such as a fish catalogue. Unfortunately, the main draw of the museum, the famous Alexander Mosaic is being restored. It depicts Alexander at the battle of Issus where he defeats Darius.
We find more rooms with marble statutes when we walk to the exit. One even bigger than others. It’s difficult to give the impressive works the attention they deserve with two small kids needing attention too.
We take the metro to the Palazzo Reale, this time the metro arrives after a few minutes wait. Before we enter the palace, we take a pizza break at a covered terrace.
We finish nearly four pizza’s when we continue the rainy walk to the palace. There is a huge square in front of the palace and a basilica facing the building on the other end. We can enter the site, but none of the buildings. We walk around, but it seems closed today but there is no information given.
However, the next-door medieval Castle Nuovo is open. It was a royal seat for kings of Naples, Aragon and Spain until 1815. It has impressive towers, and we’re happy to hide in the rooms and chapel from the heavy rain. Zeno falls asleep in the Deuter, and Italian men and women are molified by the sleeping blond boy. The main hall of the castle is still used by the city council but once in a time was the setting of Royal weddings.
Thunder and even heavier rain harrow us as we make our way back to the metro. We go back to the museum to walk through the narrow streets once more to visit some churches and to see the street with all the Christmas stalls, both Jan and Miriam sent us this tip. Sadly the churches are closed, probably in preparation of the Mass tonight. There are many shops selling handmade nativity scenes, but in this day and age of cheap knock offs it’s hard to know if you won’t be paying hundreds of euros for some mass produced item from a sweat shop.
We walk back to the train station and there is a train leaving in 1 minute, not exactly sure if it stops at our station, we hesitate for a second but decide to go for it. As the doors close behind us we check the route and we lucked out. 30 minutes later we carry the children home from the station and put on the heater, sit under a blanket and watch some Christmas shows before a repeat of last nights dinner (pasta with chickpeas – tastes better than it sounds!) and bed. Tim walked 20.000 steps, only imagine what Cleo walked today.
