Monte Faito and Pizza A Metro

Nook of Amalfi: On summer weekends, Neapolitans flee to the Amalfi beaches or into the mountains. Monte Faito is particularly famous for its cool temperatures with hiking trails, cozy restaurants, and wooden houses.

We drove up the windy roads to the mountain peak, parking the car at the Funivia del Faito, where we then took a ride on the tram. The views of Vesuvius and the sea were stellar from here. We landed at the Circumvesuviana train stop in Stabia. From there, we took the train four stops to Vico Equense and walked a few blocks to the famous Pizza A Metro, which makes fresh pizzas in a woodfire oven while you watch:

The waiter then cut the pizza at our table:

After lunch, we returned to Monte Faito, walking along the trails where the air was at least ten degrees cooler than in Naples. This was a particularly enjoyable visit for the kids who searched for the goats whose bells clanged around their necks.

Getting There: Take the Circumvesuviana to Castellammare di Stabia. When you get out, the Funivia will be adjacent to the station. Trams run to the top every half hour.

Vico Equense is four stops on the Circumvesuviana from Stabia. When you disembark, ask the locals how to get there. It's four left turns and three blocks away from the station.

For more information, click here.

Execution Square

Nook of Naples: It's a desolate Piazza surrounded by dilapidated apartment houses and three churches -- one shut and full of weeds, the second boarded up, and the third open only at odd hours. This is Piazza Mercato, otherwise known as Execution Square.

The Angevin rulers decreed that executions would be held here after they beheaded the last Hohenstaufen King of Naples in 1268, sixteen year old Corradino. The next notable execution occurred after the 1647 uprising against the Spanish when they levied a high tax on fruit. The leader, Tommaso Aniello d'Amalfi, otherwise known as Masaniello, lost his life here. Thereafter, the piazza became a site used for the graves of those who died of plague. Most famously, when the Bourbons crushed the Parthenopean Republic in 1799, all its leaders were executed here, including Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca.

You can find this eerie place by walking from the train station down Corso Umberto a little ways and then taking a left down to the port. Piazza Mercato is also not far from where cruise ships come in. But hang on to your purse and bring tennis shoes just in case the neighborhood kids, whose memories are short, have set up a soccer net and ask you to play.

Where They Invented Pizza

Nook of Naples: Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba invented pizza. No really -- they did. (And don't confuse this restaurant with Brandi's. Brandi's invented the 'Margherita Piazza', made for Queen Margherita upon her visit to Naples. But Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba started out as a street stall in 1720 and became a restaurant in the 1800's. Their signature dish: the Napoletana. Made from fresh mozzarella di buffala, fresh tomatoes, basil leaves, and olive oil, the crust is left deliberately thin:

Located in the center of town, at the very top of via Port'Alba, you can also buy slices of their pizza from their outside stall and eat it as a snack while you wander along the bookstalls and bookstores that clutter the street from Piazza Dante up to Piazza Bellini.

Buonissimo!

MADRE

Museo d'arte Contemporanea Donna Regina Napoli

Nook of Naples: I was surprised to find that with the bevy of old ruins glutting the region, Neapolitans still have a love for the cutting-edge contemporary. Opened in 2005, MADRE has an incredible permanent collection of modern art by some of the 'greats': Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Olderburg, Mimmo Paladino, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Mapplethorpe. My favorite is Michelangelo Pistoletto's "Black Venus":

When I visited, the temporary exhibition space displayed Riccardo Mendoza's eerie series called "The Possessed":

MADRE has a children's area with hands-on activites. You can also wander to the far back of the museum and enter the 8th century church Santa Maria di Donnaregina Vecchia. Evening events are hosted here, making the museum a great place for all ages. For anyone visiting Naples who likes modern art, I'd definitely make this a 'must see' destination point.

Getting There: Via Settembrini 79 (near Piazza Cavour)

www.museomadre.it

Free on Mondays and closed on Tuesdays. Saturdays and Sundays open until midnight.

Healing Your Ailments

Nook of Naples: Catholic devotion and miracles go hand in hand in Naples. The Feast of San Gennaro is only one example of the abundant miracles taking place in this city. In the church of Gesu Nuovo (built in 1584), the walls and ceilings of two side chapels are crowded with silver body parts. These ornaments are most numerous in the side chapel that houses the remains of San Giuseppe Moscati, a physician canonized a saint in 1987:


Worshippers place these silver body parts here to either ask San Giuseppe to heal an ailment or to thank him for having already healed their disease. But first, they must purchase the ornament from a religious shop, many of which pepper the two main arteries of Spaccanapoli -- Via Tribunali and Via San Biagio dei Librai.

At Statuaria Sacra, the owner has a shoe box behind the cashier's desk with a bevy of silver and faux-silver body parts that range in price from 20-60 Euro. The ornaments include legs, arms, heads, livers, stomachs, pancreas, throats as well as full body men, women and children. He was kind enough to let me photograph these ornaments and explained that this tradition is a Neapolitan original.


Getting There:
Statuaria Sacra
Via S. Biagio Dei Librai, 76
Napoli 80138
email: statuariasacra@alice.it

Church of Gesu Nuovo
Piazza del Gesu Nuovo 2