Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The park is also home to the take-it-or-leave-it
Stazione Zoologica
Offline map
Google map
(Aquario; 081 583 32 63;
www.szn.it
; Viale Aquario 1; adult/child €1.50/
1; 9am-6pm Tue-Sat, 9am-7.30pm Sun; C25 to Riviera di Chiaia)
, Europe's oldest
aquarium. Housed in a stately neoclassical building designed by Adolf von Hildebrandt,
its tired-looking tanks are home to 200 species of marine flora and fauna from the city's
bay.
ART IN TRANSIT
Underground art means just that in Naples, with many of the city's metro stations designed or decor-
ated by A-list artists, both homegrown and foreign. You'll find Mario Merz's blue neon digits at Van-
vitelli; a witty Fiat installation by Perino & Vele at Salvator Rosa; and Technicolor wall drawings by
Sol LeWitt at Materdei. And that's before we mention the snapshots by heavyweight Italian photo-
graphers at Museo; or Jannis Kounellis' eerie shoe installation at Dante.
Most of the city's 'Art Stations' are on Line 1, which is currently being extended. Its newest stations
- Università and Toledo - are arguably its best yet.
'It kid' industrial-designer Karim Rashid is the force behind Università, a playful, candy-coloured
ode to the digital age. White tiles clad the station entrance, each one printed with a word created in the
last century. In the station itself you'll find lenticular icons that change perspective and colour, a sculp-
ture reflecting the nodes and synapses of the brain, platform steps pimped with abstracted portraits of
Dante and Beatrice, even platform walls adorned with glowing, 'animated' artwork (stare persistently).
No less breathtaking is Toledo station, its lobby featuring ruins from an Aragonese fortress and a
spectacular wall mosaic by conceptual artist William Kentridge. Depicted in the latter is a medley of
Neapolitan icons, from San Gennaro and a
pizzaiolo
(pizza maker) to the Museo Archeologico
Nazionale's famous sculpture
Farnese Atlante
. Another Kentridge mural hovers above the escalators
(it's said that the cat represents the artist himself).
Toledo station reaches a depth of 50m below sea level, a fact not lost on the station's colour scheme,
which goes from ochre (representing Naples' tufo stone) to a dazzling blue as one descends. It's here,
'below the sea' that you'll find a spectacular, mosaic porthole, streaming down light from the sky
above. The porthole's light installation is by artist Bob Wilson, whose wave-motif concourse panels
'move' as you hurry past them.
At the time of research,
MetroNapoli
(
www.metro.na.it
)
was running free one-hour tours (usually
in Italian) of Museo, Dante and Università stations on Tuesdays at 10am, with tours departing from the
Museo station atrium (check the website for updates). Alternatively, read about each art station on the
MetroNapoli website and explore at your own pace...all for the price of a metro ticket.
