Naples is relatively overlooked by the tourist hordes that take over Florence, Rome and Venice. But it’s a former imperial city, one of great hills, lapping sea and mighty 18th-century buildings. And although run down and graffitied, it still has treasures to make the soul sing.
I arrived there one weekend this summer, and went straight up to my charming room on the sixth floor of the grand but dusty Hotel Excelsior. When I awoke in the early morning of the next day, it was to a heart-stopping view. Light streamed through the window and on to my terrace; below was the bay, the sun twinkling on its calm waves, and on the far side, in all its majesty, was Vesuvius.
The city holds two jewels connected with this October issue. My friend Federico Forquet – a couturier of Rome in the shining 1960s, then a distinguished decorator and garden designer – has superbly transformed the porcelain rooms of the immense strawberry-pink Capodimonte Museum. You can find out more for yourself here, where Marella Caracciolo Chia rhapsodises about his work.
The Thomas Dane Gallery on the Via Francesco Crispi, meanwhile, was once the German Consulate, and still has an air of Second Empire grandeur to it, with its vast rooms and views across the water. I have written about Thomas’s London house from page 256.
Having taken both these in, I was off to the Sansevero Chapel Museum to see Giuseppe Sanmartino’s Veiled Christ (1753), although I prefer the Release from Deception (1754), by Francesco Queirolo, depicting a man tangled in a fishing net. Each exceptional work is carved from a single block of white marble.
Later, I walked down the steps near my hotel to the charming waterfront restaurant La Bersagliera dal 1919, admiring the boats clustered around and the Castel dell’Ovo, an imposing fortress built by the Normans in the 12th century on the ruins of a Roman structure. Another great fortification, the Charterhouse of St Martin (on a hilltop from which one may see all of Naples), had tarnished 18th-century carriages in its stone-paved archway. In its museum – which is filled with astonishing 18th-century nativity dioramas, fine examples of the craft of belenismo – there is an unbelievable study of Saint Sebastian by the Spanish artist Jusepe de Ribera.
Then on to the National Archaeological Museum. I first visited it years ago, when it was a little worn, but today it is undergoing a renaissance of sorts. The ground floor is endless, with imposing Roman bronze and marble statues set handsomely on great marble plinths, along with painted depictions of gods and goddesses.
Some works are shrouded in plastic sheets, waiting to be installed – including the sublime Hercules at Rest and the vast statue of the Torment of Dirce. Upstairs, there are painted panels from Pompeii and Herculaneum, some with bewitching landscapes featuring distant temples and strutting ibises. There is also a section of pornographic pictures and objects – most... amusing.
The following day I went to Pompeii itself. It’s fascinating seeing the handsome streets and houses, some of which have illustrated wall panels in dull red and black, yellow and clear blue, depicting nubile couples at play, flowers, and snakes, fish and birds. Alas, I didn’t have time for Herculaneum, but I did visit the astonishing Villa Poppaea – in the ruins of Oplontis, an ancient Roman town – where excavations began in 1964. In time, a residence with about 100 rooms was unearthed, a seaside palace fit for Empress Poppaea Sabina, the scheming second wife of the emperor Nero. She was allegedly kicked by her husband when she was heavily pregnant and died as a result (so all her machinations were in vain), a decade or so before the eruption that engulfed the area. Almost 2,000 years later, this splendid site – now hemmed in by 1960s high-rises – has been restored and is as bewitching as the rest of this richly alluring place.
A version of this article appears in the October 2026 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers.
Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, and be the first to receive exclusive stories like this one, direct to your inbox
