Naples the ugly city

Piles of rubbish in every corner, and strewn over all the squares, graffiti on every surface, decayed and abandoned buildings, even the entrances of the new metro stations are kicked in and crazed. When we first went to jerez it felt tattered at the edges, and with fallen down, abandoned, buildings. But since then they have worked hard to improve and modernise. Here it feels that it's been this way so long they now just don't care. Very sad.

This morning we walked along Spaccanapoli the street dividing the centre of the city, and visited two churches that sounded interesting. The first, Gesu Nuovo, is a very decorated Jesuit church with rich 16c frescoes everywhere . The second was completely opposite- a very plain austere church with some beautiful modern stained glass in different styles. The church was bombed in 1943 but was rebuilt in the original style. It has a famous cloister covered in colourful 17c majolica tiles - not to our taste but impressive. It has a small bit of original 14c fresco by Giotto or one of his pupils and an excavated Roman bathhouse very ruined.

The next stop was a museum with a fabulous painting by Caravaggio with many other boring paintings.

After lunch we went to the Duomo which contains the oldest baptistry in Europe with wonderful 5c mosaics - like the ones in Ravenna, a 13c church also with mosaics and a chapel with 13c frescoes.

A tiring day among hordes of noisy tourists but worth it.Read more