Kingdom of Naples

“ The wars undertaken for the kingdom of Naples,—those wars which produced more monstrous crimes than glorious exploits, more revolts than battles, completed the corruption of the Neapolitan character, in which has always been remarked, on the one part, an inclination to shake off the yoke of present domination, and, on the other, an extreme resignation in submitting to the yoke of victory. ”

“ The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits of the present kingdom of Naples; and the countries united by his arms have not been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred years. The monarchy has been composed of the Greek provinces of Calabria and Apulia, of the Lombard principality of Salerno, the republic of Amalphi, and the inland dependencies of the large and ancient duchy of Beneventum. ”

“ In 1435, Alfonso the Magnanimous, the rival of René of Anjou for the kingdom of Naples, had warned Filippo Maria, who then ruled Milan, that the French, onceThe Peace of Italy depended on the Triple Alliance of Milan, Florence, and Naples. masters of Naples, would seek to extend their territories in the north. ”

“ On the other hand, the example of Naples, where the firmness of the king has preserved in the end his dominions entire, though Sicily for [14] a time was severed from the kingdom, and Naples itself was the theatre of a bloody convulsion, proves alike of what flimsy materials revolution is composed in the south of Europe, and through what a perilous crisis a nation can be safely conducted, when the depositaries of power are not unworthy of the elevated duties with which they are entrusted. ”

“ Piero and the King of France were mortal enemies; the King of Naples had no more resolved ally than Medici, though the French inclinations of the city prevented him from showing the true colour of his opinions. He was, in fact, “immoderately bound up with Arragon, and determined to chance the same fortune,” as Guicciardini tells us; since in return for this alliance he had arranged that Ferdinand of Naples should support him in turning his old republic into a new monarchy. Naples in those days represented in Italy the kingdom as distinguished from the Signory ”

“ No one will want to die after seeing Naples. He will want to live the longer and come again, if not for Naples itself then for its surroundings, for Pompeii, Herculaneum, Sorrento, Capri, Amalfi, Vesuvius and Ischia. ”

“ It is well to spend hours and days in the museum and aquarium, or in wandering from church to church, spoilt as is almost every one among those sacred buildings by the corrupt taste of the eighteenth century, which daubed over noble gothic arches with unmeaning Barocco ornament, and left Naples degraded among Italian cities by the loss of almost all that was once done nobly within her walls in stone or marble. But here is the very fount and centre of the sovereignty of Naples, the home of all its kings since Manfred, the Palace of Anjou and Aragon. ”

“ Here, too, the Greek cities soon governed themselves, giving only a nominal obedience to the Catapan and paying tribute, not very regularly, to Constantinople.
The chief Greek city in Italy was Naples. Under Constans II (641-668) Naples became a Duchy of the Empire (661) . From that time it ruled itself. Its governor was the Duke of Naples, "Magister militum." [28] He had a council of "Nobiliores." So it became an aristocratic republic, not unlike Venice. At first the dukes were nominated by the Exarch; then a hereditary line began. ”

“ The noblest of the Neapolitan families took part in the struggle of 1848. A great number of nobles, learned men and priests have occupied its prisons ever since. Naples, more than any other Italian state, consists of two classes, an aristocracy which is wealthy, possessed of much culture and patriotism with a strong feeling for liberty, and a people, ignorant, bound to the earth, without any higher interest ”

“ It is this circumstance which, viewed in the mind's eye, throws a perpetual sunshine over the fine scenes of Tuscany and Catalonia, and lends a charm even to the flat uninteresting corn-fields of Picardy. The absence of it, on the contrary, disfigures the finest scenes in the south of Italy, and causes Naples, the most delightful spot on earth, perhaps, for situation and climate, to dwell on the recollection like a whited sepulchre, a gilded lazar-house of helpless and incurable wretchedness. ”

“ The people look full of life, gay, independent, even lawless.
Thus we reached Naples and its charming bay, over which Vesuvius seems to rule like a gloomy despot with judgment and death upon his lips. The city however looks gay, far more so than Rome. The houses shine out white, amongst the verdant gardens, beside the bright blue sea, towards which the coast of Naples extends itself like an opened embrace, the rocky arms of which are richly adorned with towns, country-houses, and pleasure grounds!—splendid bracelets! ”

“ Colossal figures in marble of the most famous rulers of Naples occupy niches on the façade of the Royal Palace, and here Roger the Norman, Frederick II., the Swabian, who founded the university, Charles of Anjou, Alfonso of Arragon, Charles III., Joachim Murat, and Victor Emmanuel II. gaze stonily from their retreats at the noisy tram and rushing motor-car.
The Spanish Bourbons were the last to rule in Naples before Italy was united towards the close of the last century. They did much to improve the city but nothing to help its people. ”

“ The sanctity of this great and ancient church, its propinquity to the Mercato and to the teeming populations of the old alleys of the city, has made it in all ages a central point of that turbulent hot life which fills the history of Naples with tales of blood and terror. The associations of the place are infinite, and would in themselves fill a portly volume were they all set down with the detail which their rich interest demands. One tale there is which must be 162 told in full, for its tragedy is too great to be forgotten, and has indeed rung round all the world. ”

“ The ancient quadrangle of streets and alleys, the old Greek city which held out so stoutly generation after generation when besieged by Lombard or Imperialist, lies open now to strangers of every nation. On entering its precinct one appears to have found a new world, albeit an unsavoury one. For here, in place of the irregular and curved vistas in which the builders of modern Naples have delighted, is a long narrow street of exceeding straightness, cleaving like an arrow-flight through the close-packed houses. ”

“ Naples is the largest, dirtiest and most beautiful city in Italy. From the balconies of our hotel, which stands high on the thickly-built hillside, we have a matchless view—the cream-colored city at our feet, with its red roofs and blue domes, rising from the water's edge and climbing the embayed mountain like half of a vast amphitheatre; the volcano of Vesuvius beyond, lifting its white plume of warning smoke by day, and sometimes glaring red at night; the brown ruins of overwhelmed but disentombed Pompeii a little to the right; then the cliffs of Sorrento ”

“ I saw Naples from the Castle of Saint Elmo—setting aside the sea and Mount Vesuvius, those unequalled features in that radiant picture—the view of the city of Naples is not so fine as the view of Rome: it is, comparatively, deficient in sentiment, in interest, and in dignity. Naples wears on her brow the voluptuous beauty of a syren—Rome sits desolate on her seven-hilled throne, "the Niobe of Nations." ”

“ I am proud of Italy, and I am proud of Naples, and I have no idea of pretending to be other than a Neapolitan. One can be cosmopolitan without losing one's patriotism, I venture respectfully to hope. But I would not have cared then to set myself right with the populace of my native city, either on that or any other point, though I could have done it with a word. ”

“ To the south of the bay the scenery is not less magnificent, and scarcely less dear to memory: Naples, rising from the sea like an amphitheatre of white palaces, and towers, and glittering domes: beyond, Mount Vesuvius, with the smoke curling from its summits like a silver cloud, and forming the only speck upon the intense blue sky; along its base Portici, Annunziata, Torre del Greco, glitter in the sun ”

“ Naples seems to live only in the present, without a thought either of the past or of the future. A friend who came here a day or two before us, expressed the contrast between the two cities by saying energetically, "Naples is life: Rome is death!" Indeed, we have here a spectacle of extraordinary animation. I have seen somewhere a series of pictures of "Street Scenes in Naples," and surely no city in Europe offers a greater variety of figures and costumes, as rich and poor, princes and beggars, soldiers and priests, jostle each other in the noisy, laughing crowd. ”

“ Strabo speaks of these Greek colonies, whence the city derives its origin.
The city of Naples was formerly surrounded by very high walls, about 22 miles in circumference; but on its enlargement, neither walls nor gates were erected. It may be, however, defended by three strong castles.
Naples is divided into twelve quarters, or departments, and contains about 450,000 inhabitants. It is consequently the most populous city in Europe, except London and Paris. The streets are neither broad nor regular, and are paved with broad slabs of hard stone, resembling the lava of Vesuvius. ”

“ Naples is no longer the Naples of old. The curse of the billycock hat, which has spread over Europe, has not spared Southern Italy. The common people wear the castoff clothes of the well-to-do, and the well-to-do dress in the London fashion. As a natural consequence, the Neapolitan porters and fishermen and lazzaroni have little to distinguish them from the London labourer and the London costermonger. Naples has also in a great measure been ruined by the rich{192} foreigner, who insists on carrying his own manners and customs with him. ”

“ Lower down in the vast prospect is the chain of Campanian mountains, which seem so lofty when one cannot look beyond them; and at their feet lies Naples, that queenly city with the long sweep of coast from Posilipo to Miseno, where the flames rose from the pyre of the Trojan trumpeter. Further off again is craggy Ischia, while blue and infinitely vague upon the skyline one can see the mountains behind Gæta. ”

“ The power of the dukes of Naples was circumscribed by the bay and the adjacent isles, by the hostile territory of Capua, and by the Roman colony of Amalphi. ... The three islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily still adhered to the empire. ... Rome was oppressed by the iron sceptre of the exarchs, and a Greek, perhaps a eunuch, insulted with impunity the ruins of the Capitol. But Naples soon acquired the privilege of electing her own dukes; the independence of Amalphi was the fruit of commerce ”

“ The recollection of the mob through which one struggled to the quay, the noise, the extortion, and the smells had faded away into the limbo of bad dreams, and I was free to go whither I would in the small portion of the day remaining and taste whichever sight of Naples pleased me first. There is nothing more bewildering to a stranger than to be turned loose in a great city with which he is imperfectly acquainted. I looked east towards the Carmine; but the handsome campanile lay far from the centre of the city. ”

“ All reports from Naples seem to imply that the Royal power is but as a dead leaf in autumn, blown hither and thither in the swirls and eddies which come before the storm breaks. Count Cavour thinks that it is best to make sure of Sicily, and leave the young Bourbon tiger-cub to another spell of power on the mainland. The people of Naples have had such bitter experience of how others of his race visit upon their people the crime of belief in Royal promises, that it is scarcely probable they will try the experiment a fourth time. ”

“ Elmo to Castel Nuovo no less firmly than they credit the existence of vast caverns filled with gold and jewels lying underneath Castel dell'Uovo, guarded for ever from the sight of man by the chafing of the waves.
Naples presents us with a strange blend of romance and common sense—the modern spirit, practical and useful, setting itself with something like the energy of the old Italian genius towards the gigantic task of acquiring the arts of government, and turning a people enslaved for centuries into one which can wield the hammer of its own great destinies. ”

“ Had the peace of Europe not been broken by France, the Austrian power in Italy would have been unbroken at this moment, and Naples have been still under the dominion of that mad tyrant whose supreme delight it was to offend the moral sense of the world, and who found even in the remonstrances of his brother-despots occasion for increasing the weight of the chains of his victims, and of adding to the intensity and the exquisiteness of their tortures. ”

“ Roman emperors, Pagan statesmen and poets, Norman, French and Spanish princes, popes, saints and theologians, merchants and scientists of the Middle Ages, writers of the Renaissance and heroes of the Risorgimento, all have combined to shed a halo of historical romance upon Naples and its Riviera, where there is scarcely a sea-girt town or a crumbling fortress that is not redolent of the memory of some personage whose name is inscribed on the roll of European history. ”