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( Dante) On hot summer evenings, Piazza Dante turns into a communal living room,
packed with entire families who stroll, eat, smoke, play cards, chase balloons, and whinge
about the in-laws.
Dominating the eastern flank of the square is the enormous facade of the Convitto
Nazionale , the pièce de résistance of Luigi Vanvitelli's spectacular 18th-century square.
Dedicated to the Bourbon king Charles VII, its central protagonist is now a sand-blasted
marble Dante looking out over Via Toledo.
Below it all, the Dante metro station doubles as a cutting-edge art space, with installa-
tions from some art-world heavyweights. As you head down on the escalator, look up and
catch Joseph Kosuth's Queste Cose Visibili (These Visible Things) above you. Eye-
squintingly huge and neon, it's an epic quotation from Dante's Il Convivio . Along the
wall at the bottom of the escalator you'll find artist Jannis Kounellis's renegade train
tracks running over abandoned shoes. Right behind you, above the second set of escalat-
ors, sits Intermediterraneo, Michelangelo Pistoletto's giant mirror map of the Mediter-
ranean Sea.
Chiesa di Sant'Anna dei Lombardi
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( 081 551 33 33; Piazza Monteoliveto; 9am-1pm & 4-6pm; Toledo) Dubbed a
veritable museum of Renaissance art, this magnificent church is testament to the close
links that once existed between the Neapolitan Aragonese and the Florentine Medici dyn-
asty. One particular highlight is Guido Mazzoni's spectacular Pietà . Dating to 1492, the
terracotta ensemble is made up of eight life-size terracotta figures surrounding the lifeless
body of Christ.
Originally the figures were painted, but even without colour they still make quite an im-
pression. The sacristy is a work of art in itself. The walls are lined with gloriously inlaid
wood panels by Giovanni da Verona, while the ceiling is covered by Giorgio Vasari's
16th-century frescoes that depict the Allegories and Symbols of Faith .
Across Via Monteoliveto from the church is the 16th-century Palazzo Gravina
Offline map Google map ( Via Monteoliveto 3) , the seat of Naples University's architec-
ture faculty.
CHURCH
Casa e Chiesa di Santa
Maria Francesca delle
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