Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
designer Livio De Simone is also showcased, alongside vintage millinery, gloves, ecclesi-
astical garb and reproductions of 16th and 17th-century garments.
One of the more unusual exhibits features reproductions of the fashion worn in painter
Diego Velázquez's 17th-century masterpiece
Las Meninas
(The Maids of Honour). The
museum is tucked away inside the Fondazione Mondragone, established as a 'retreat for
noble matrons and virgins' in the mid-17th century.
THE CAPTAIN'S CURSE
Of the many macabre tales crawling around the Cimitero delle Fontanelle (
Click here
)
, none intrigues
quite like that of
il Capitano
(The Captain); the centre skull at the base of the cemetery's three Calvary
crosses.
According to legend, a pious young woman from La Sanità adopted the skull, a common practice in
Naples until the late 1960s. As incongruous as it seems, the Cimitero delle Fontanelle doubled as a
lover's lane for lovebirds with nowhere else to go. This was not lost on the woman's less-than-pious
boyfriend, who convinced her to lose her virginity at the site.
Pensive and nervous, the young woman approached the Captain, asking the skull to bless their rela-
tionship and grant them a happy marriage. Not one for superstitious beliefs, the boyfriend began
mocking her and the Captain, poking the skull's eye socket and daring it to turn up at their wedding.
Adding insult to injury, his took his lover's virginity then and there.
Fast forward to the couple's wedding banquet, where a stranger enters wearing an eye patch and
old-fashioned officer's uniform. No less cocky than at the cemetery that fateful day, the young groom
corners the guest as he is leaving, demanding to know who had invited him. The officer turns around,
smiles, and replies 'You did... at the Fontanelle' before opening his coat to reveal a full skeleton that
immediately crumbles to the floor.
Not surprisingly, the shock killed both the groom and his bride, whose final resting place suitably
remains a mystery. While some say that the couple's remains lie in the Cimitero delle Fontanelle, oth-
ers believe that a funerary fresco of a couple in the Catacomba di San Gaudioso (
Click here
)
indicates
their place of eternal regret.
Chiesa San Giovanni a Carbonara
( 081 29 58 73; Via Carbonara 5; 9am-5.30pm Mon-Sat; Piazza Cavour,
Museo)
Sumptuous sculpture make this Gothic church worth a detour. Andrea de Firenze,
Tuscan sculptors and northern-Italian artists collaborated on the Gothic-Renaissance
CHURCH
