NOWHERE LIKE NAPLES

Meet your private driver outside your accommodation in Rome and relax on the ride to the Amalfi Coast. En route, don’t miss the chance to discover one of Italy’s most alluring cities on a guided walking tour.

Soul-stirring art, breathtaking panoramas and unexpected elegance hide within the noisy, crowded streets of Naples. Resting on the edge of a sun-kissed bay, in the shadow of mighty Mount Vesuvius, this vibrant seaport town boasts thousands of years of history waiting to be explored. Its street plan, based on the ancient Roman grid-patterned roads, and the stunning architecture of its charming, yet faded, palazzi have earned the city its rightful place on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1995.

After some free time for lunch, your guide will meet you at the restaurant and lead you down tangled streets, across lively piazzas, inside ornately decorated churches allowing you to experience Naples in all its riotous appeal. You will admire some of the city’s most famous attractions and learn about its rich and riveting past, beginning with its early origins as the ancient Greek Neapolis, right up to the present day.

You begin your tour with a visit to the Church of Gesù Nuovo. Originally built in the 15th century as a private noble mansion and converted into a Christian temple by the Jesuits in the late 1500s, the church still preserves the striking facade of the original Palazzo Sanseverino with its distinctive diamond-shaped ashlars. Inside an eclectic, flamboyant parade of Baroque virtuosity, brimming with frescoes, stuccoes and coloured marble decorations, attests to Naples’ prime role in fostering the greatest talents of the 17th century, including Francesco Solimena, Luca Giordano and Cosimo Fanzago.

Just a few steps away, guests may admire a preview of paradise as they wander through the cloister of the Church of Santa Chiara, once a place of private contemplation for the nuns of the Order of Saint Clare. Bright hand-painted majolica tiles depicting figs, citrus fruits and vines adorn the sixty-four octagonal columns while the ceramic benches feature everyday scenes of urban and rural life in the 1700s. Additional splashes of colour are provided by the gardens blooming with hedges, lemon and orange trees, whose vivid greens stand out against the cerulean backdrop of the Neapolitan sky.

From here amble along Via Benedetto Croce, cross Piazza San Domenico Maggiore and reach the mysterious Sansevero Chapel. Prince Raimondo di Sangro drew up the iconographic layout of the interior and commissioned the finest 18th century artists with the task of embellishing its walls with allegorical statues. Accounts of the prince’s beliefs, alchemic practices and fascination with the occult will surely intrigue you as you unravel the underlying meaning behind the works displayed here. Giuseppe Sanmartino’s amazingly realistic sculpture of the Veiled Christ is among the chapel’s highlights together with the so-called anatomic machines, two authentic human skeletons bearing precise reproductions of arterial and nervous systems made from beeswax, iron wire and silk… a puzzling, somewhat macabre sight that sparked rumours and dark legends about Prince di Sangro’s evil powers.

Other, more joyful surprises await you in Via San Gregorio Armeno, known for its artisan workshops selling hundreds of exquisitely crafted statuettes and figurines for traditional nativity scenes. Detailed miniatures of the Holy Family, shepherds and donkeys together with representations of pizzerias, fruit markets, gastronomic delights and caricatures of politicians spill out onto the street in a uniquely Neapolitan fusion of sacred and profane, creativity and humour.

After the tour rejoin your driver and head for your hotel on the Amalfi Coast.