Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Under the French Angevins, Naples' artistic
and intellectual credentials grew. Charles built
the Castel Nuovo in 1279, the port was en-
larged, and in the early 14th century Robert of
Anjou constructed Castel Sant'Elmo. Alas,
nasty politicking between family factions
marked the last century of Angevin rule.
Queen Joan I was suspected of murdering her
husband and fled the city between 1348 and 1352, leaving her vengeful Hungarian in-laws
to occupy Naples. Some 70-odd years later her namesake, Queen Joan II, could only stop
her husband stealing the crown thanks to substantial popular support.
With the royals tangled up in soap-style angst, the time was ripe for the Spanish
Aragonese to launch their attack.
For a wide-ranging general site on Italian his-
tory, check out
www.arcaini.com
. It covers, in
potted form, everything from prehistory to the
postwar period, and includes a brief chrono-
logy.
JOAN II: QUEEN OF LUST
Had tabloids existed in the middle ages, Joan II (1373-1435) would have been a regular fixture. Six
centuries after her reign as Queen of Naples, Neapolitans still point out the various settings for her
'man-eating' antics. It was at the Castel Nuovo that she apparently threw her lovers to a hungry cro-
codile, and at the Palazzo Donn'Anna where she threw them straight off a cliff. One can only assume
they had underperformed at the queen's infamous orgies.
While the line separating fact and fiction is a very fine one indeed, it is widely accepted that the
daughter of Charles III and Margherita of Durazzo was no stranger to the company of men, many of
them power brokers. At the time of her coronation in 1414, she was already the widow of William,
Duke of Austria, the rejected fiancé of her cousin, Hedwig of Poland. As queen, Joan wasted little time
appointing her lover Pandolfello Alopo Grand Chamberlain, before a short-lived betrothal to John of
Aragon in 1415.
Next in line was James II of Bourbon, whom she married that same year. The honeymoon was
short-lived, however: refused the title of Prince of Taranto, jealous James II had Alopo murdered and
forced Joan to bestow him with the title of King of Naples. As king, James was determined to assume
complete power, imprisoning Joan in the royal household. The king's divalike behaviour provoked ri-
oting in Naples in 1416, forcing him to hang up his crown.
If Joan was needing any consolation, she found it in the arms of nobleman Giovanni Caracciolo. Yet
even the position of prime minister of Naples wasn't enough for Caracciolo, whose increasingly ruth-
less ambition drove his royal lover to plot his assassination in 1432. His tomb lies in the Chiesa di San
Giovanni a Carbonara, not far from cunning Joan's own resting place, the Basilica della Santissima
Annunziata.
