Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Norman style encompassed an exotic mix of Norman, Saracen and Byzantine influences,
from marble columns to Islamic-inspired pointed arches to glass tesserae detailing. This
style is clearly visible in the two-toned masonry and 13th-century belltower of the Catted-
rale di Sant'Andrea in Amalfi. It's also echoed in the 12th-century belltower of Salerno's
Duomo, not to mention in its bronze, Byzantine-style doors and Arabesque portico arches.
For Naples, its next defining architectural
period would arrive with the rule of the French
House of Anjou in the 13th century. As the
new capital of the Angevin kingdom, suitably
ambitious plans were announced for the city.
Land was reclaimed, and bold new churches
and monasteries built. This was the age of the
'Gothic', a time of flying buttresses and grot-
esque gargoyles. While enthusiastically em-
braced by the French, Germans and the Spanish, the Italians preferred a more restrained
and sombre interpretation of the style - defined by wide walls, a single nave, trussed ceil-
ing and horizontal bands. One of its finest examples is Naples' Complesso Monumentale
di San Lorenzo Maggiore, its bared-back elegance also echoed in the city's Chiesa di San
Pietro a Maiella and Basilica di Santa Chiara.
That both the facade of the Basilica di San Lorenzo Maggiore and the coffered ceiling
of the Chiesa di San Pietro a Maiella are later baroque add-ons remind us that much of the
period's original architecture was altered over successive centuries. A case in point is the
Chiesa di San Domenico Maggiore, whose chintzy gilded interior betrays a neo-Gothic
makeover. The church's main entrance, in a courtyard off Vico San Domenico, also bears
witness to a series of touch-ups. Here, a delicate 14th-century portal is framed by an 18th-
century pronaos (the space in front of the body of a temple) surmounted by a 19th-century
window; and flanked by two Renaissance-era chapels and a baroque belltower. Indeed,
even the Angevins' Castel Nuovo wasn't spared, with only a few sections of the original
structure surviving, among them the Palatina Chapel. The castle's striking, white
triumphal-arch centrepiece - a 15th-century addition - is considered one of Naples' finest
early Renaissance creations.
Greek geographer, philosopher and historian
Strabo (63 BC-AD 24) wrote that the stretch
of Italian coast from Capo Miseno (in the
Campi Flegrei) to Sorrento resembled a single
city, so strewn was it with elegant villas and
suburbs sprawling out from central Naples.
 
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