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The spaccanapoli or split naples is the busiest and richest area of the city architecturally speaking and as such it is the real heart of the city. This area is just jammed with churches each with something incredible inside. Its main axis is Via San Biagio dei Libri and Via san Gregorio Armeno. The latter boasts a church named oddly enough San Gregorio Armeno, an opulent baroque structure filled with frescoes by the Neapolitan artist Giordano and not one but two gilded organs. If you are impressed by the frescoes of Giordano you can get more of his work back on Via Duomo at the Museo Filangieri where the work of the prolific artist were collected here. Giordano was the student of the more famous Jose Ribera, the Neapolitan otherwise known as il Spagnoletto whose work is also here. In largo di Corpo di Nilo west of Via San Biagio there is a statue known as the statua del corpo di Napoli or the statue of the body of naples, sculpted during the reign of Nero, of an old man reclining. The nearby church of Sant'Angelo a Milo boasts the first renaissance work in Naples by Donatello and Michelozzo. In piazza San Domenico Maggiore you can't miss the Guglia di San Domenico, the baroque obelisk that marks the end of the plague in 1737. It has a counterpart in Piazza Gesł Nuovo much bigger done 1750. North in Via de Santis is the Cappella Sansevero, unusual its the contents. The church was built Prince Raimondo who was an alchemist and left some of the results of his work in the chapel such as bodies under glass and their various parts in glass jars. Gruesome stuff. Avoid this and go for the treasures the capella has to offer. There is a carving from a single piece of marble of a dead Christ laid flat and covered in a veil. Haunting. Left and right are the veiled figures of Modesty and Disillusionment. |