Galleria Umberto, Naples, Italy

One of the most grandiose shopping malls in the world, the Galleria Umberto, built in the shadow of the Castel Nuovo and the port of Naples, dates to the late 19th Century.Open to the elements, but still featuring a glass roof, it shows the influence of classical design and the Crystal Palace, built in London earlier in the 19th Century.Interestingly, there aren't a huge number of stores, and most of them are very expensive.The dome is magnificent, and is the centerpiece of the complex. You won't find any parking lots at this shopping mall, as it's built right up to the street and surrounded on all sides by other buildings across the street.

Barons' Hall, Castel Nuovo, Naples, Italy

Up a long staircase in the courtyard of the Castel Nuovo in Naples, the Barons' Hall is a masterpiece of French Gothic architecture - in southern Italy.With a massive groin vault, the ceiling is unique in that its keystone is actually open in the middle with a small skylight. I have seen many Gothic vaults in the world, but never have seen this.The room, now the meeting room for the city council of Naples, is now largely unadorned; perhaps originally large tapestries or frescoes covered the walls.Civic architecture can make the difference between having a boring city, and a city that truly inspires its residents and visitors.

Portal, Castel Nuovo, Naples

One of the major sculptural monuments of Renaissance Naples is the portal to the Castel Nuovo.Francesco Laurana's double triumphal arch features scenes of a parade through the streets of the city.Abandoning the stiff, unnatural poses of the Medieval era, Laurana's sculpture looks back to classical art and motifs for inspiration.

Castel Nuovo, Naples, Italy

Finished in 1282, the Castel Nuovo, or New Castle, provided the rulers of the Kingdom of Sicily with a bastion in the city of Naples.The walls of this fortress are just unbelievably massive, meant to intimidate and repel attackers. The pointed stones and scalloped walls were designed to cause battering rams' blows to glance off at an angle.The massive towers punctuate the walls made of tuff, the local, sandy colored stone.Now a museum, the fortress has greeted visitors to Naples coming into the port for close to 800 years.

Caserta, Campania, Italy

Every once and a while, I like to go back to the sources of much of St. Louis's architecture. Usually, that means Europe. The palace at Caserta, built outside Naples in the Campania region of Italy, sits right on the edge of the mountains that rise dramatically from the plains around the port city.A giant esplanade heads up into the mountain, terminating with a sculptural depiction of "Diana and Acteon" before heading up a steep cascade of water.It is easily one of the most beautiful places I've traveled to in the world. St. Louis has several parks that use elements common throughout palace grounds such as Caserta.The English Garden, to the southeast of the dramatic cascade, is what we in America call a park.Arranged around carefully contrived vistas that are supposed to look "natural," our own Forest Park or Tower Grove Park are the direct descendants of the English Gardens of the 18th Century.

Dumb Idea

When I took my trip to the Bay of Naples last March, I thought it would be fun to rent a boat for myself and go around the island of Capri. As I approached the island by hydrofoil, it became obvious that taking a dinghy by myself was an incredibly stupid idea, as the waves get quite high and rugged around the base of the island's cliffs. So I stuck to the paths that snake around the island.

Cumae, Campania, Italy

"Excisum Euboicae latus ingens rupis in antrum,
quo lati ducunt aditus centum, ostia centum,
unde ruunt totidem uoces, responsa Sibyllae."

Piazza del Plebiscito, Naples, Italy

Built during the Napoleonic occupation of Naples, the Piazza del Plesbiscito represents what can and can't be a great public space.Only a few years ago the plaza was filled with parked cars, but a redevelopment plan returned the area to a pedestrian zone.Nonetheless, the huge size of the plaza can be daunting, and a bit intimidating. Certainly that was the original intent, as its builders wished to frame the front of the Royal Palace on the far side of the plaza.But when I returned to the plaza on Sunday, after photographing it on Tuesday, it was filled with people, spilling out from the nearby Spanish Quarter and the Via Toledo. Such a large public space only works because of the density of the nearby neighborhoods. Otherwise, I am afraid even a huge crowd could be swallowed up in its expanse.

The Old City, Naples, Italy #2

Naples, Margellina Train Station

They know how to build good looking train stations in Naples. The Margellina Train Station is only what I would call a "suburban" train station, but it is bedecked in true Gilded Age glory.Great mass transit should make people feel like they're royalty while riding it.

Public Announcements

The walls of Italian cities are plastered with announcements, stuck to the walls of all major streets in the downtown areas of major cities. It's a little chaotic, with dozens of posters on top of each other, but it creates a great billboard for the passerby. Is there space in St. Louis for more public announcements?

Ancient Schoemehl Pots, Pompeii, Italy

I had the opportunity to visit the ruins of Pompeii on my trip to Naples, and it is interesting to walk a city that was basically 100% pedestrian friendly. The Romans had ingenious ways of making the pedestrian's travel around the city safe and pleasant.The ancient Romans understood the importance of traffic calming devices, and the safe movement of people across major streets. These two types of speed bumps served two purposes. The stones above allowed pedestrians to walk across the street, avoiding any rainwater or garbage that might have accumulated during the day. For the most part, Roman cities had sanitation not recreated until the 20th Century, so there wasn't a huge amount of garbage to walk around. Secondly, the "beever teeth" prevented chariots (not really very common in Roman society) and wagons from going too fast down the street. In fact, for the most part wheeled vehicles were banned from the streets during the day. Deliveries were made at night. Below is a second kind of traffic calming device in the city gate where drivers would have been forced to slow down.It's funny, but these ancient stones remind me of the Schoemehl pots blocking streets all over St. Louis, and in particular, they remind of the new balls in Forest Park Southeast. The only critical difference is that the Romans didn't create dead zones with theirs.

Back from Naples, with 1400 Photographs

Here is a small preview of my trip to Naples this last week. If you were planning on burglarizing my house while I was gone, you have missed your chance. Below is Herculaneum, one of the cities buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 1,900 years ago. Pompeii is certainly larger, with more elaborate buildings, but Herculaneum has better views from outside the excavations.The Amalfi Coast is a famous tourist destination, and for once, it is very justified. This is a view out of the window of the bus as we drove between Sorrento, Positano and Amalfi. The bus driver was navigating the curves of this treacherous road with one hand. Impressive.Naples has a much more laid back attitude about stray dogs. They're everywhere, are all well-behaved, and just sort of lie around. You generally don't see that in America.The Faraglioni are impressive rock towers that jut out of the sea on the north side of the island of Capri. I had the nature trail almost entirely to myself, which was wonderful on an island known for its tourist trade.Many Neapolitans who walked by me as I photographed the closed McDonalds probably wondered what I found so funny about it. Probably it was the sign in Italian that said it was "closed for inventory." More like it went out of business because no one in Naples would eat there. A triumph for good taste.Paestum, an ancient Greek city south of Naples, is beyond incredible. The temples preserved at the site are perfect examples of Doric temples. Amazing food in the region made this one of my favorite days in the Naples region.Naples also has active volcanoes in its area, and the Solfatara Crater in Pozzuoli, to the west of Naples, still has dramatic sulfer jets shooting out of the floor of the volcano. You can walk right up to the jets and stick your hand in, if you want. I love Europe because there are so many things you can do there that are forbidden in the US. Like walking to within feet of a scalding hot jet of hot sulpher.I made it out to the Romans baths at Baia, finally, and it was well worth the effort; I had seen pictures of this dome decades ago, and to finally see it was a special moment.Another highlight of my trip was seeing the fabled Grotto of the Cumaean Sybil in Cumae, to the west of Naples. Famous for her role in Virgil's Aeneid, legend has it that the sybil gave people their fortunes in these tunnels. In reality, the tunnels were from the ancient Roman naval base, but it's fun to imagine.The royal palace at Caserta is like something out of a dream. While not as large as Versailles, its setting on the slopes of a mountain give the entire setting the feeling of being in a dream.What does this have to do with St. Louis architecture? Not much, but in select posts in the future, I will tie lessons I learned in Naples and its built environment to lessons we can use here in St. Louis.