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 and Vomero hill, is the fashionable quarter most frequented by foreign residents and visitors. A fine broad street, the Riviera di Chiaja, begun in the close of the 16th century by Count d’Olivares, and completed by the duke de Medina Celi (1695–1700), runs for a mile and a half from east to west, ending in the quarter of Mergellina and Piedigrotta at the foot of the hill of Posilipo. In front lie the Villa Communale (first called Reale and subsequently Nazionale) public gardens, the chief promenade of the city, which were first laid out in 1780, and have been successively extended in 1807, in 1834, and again in recent years; and the whole edge of the bay from the Castel dell’ Ovo to Mergellina is lined by a massive embankment and carriageway, the Via Caracciolo, constructed in 1875–1881. The eastern crescent includes by far the largest as well as the oldest portion of Naples—the ports, the arsenal, the principal churches, &c. The best-known thoroughfare is the historic Toledo (as it is still popularly called, though the official name is Via Roma) which runs almost due north from the Piazza (Largo) del Plebiscito in front of the Palazzo Reale, till, as Strada Nuova Di Capodimonte, crossing the Ponte della Sanita (constructed by Murat across the valley between Santa Teresa and Capodimonte), it reaches the gates of the Capodimonte palace. A drive, the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, winds along the slopes behind the city from the Str. di Piedigrotta (at the west end of the Riv. di Chiaja) till it reaches the museum by the Via Salvator Rosa. The character of the shore of the eastern crescent has been much altered by the new harbour works, which with the wharves and warehouses have absorbed the Villa del Popolo, or People’s Park, originally constructed on land reclaimed from the bay.

The streets of Naples are generally well-paved with large blocks of lava or volcanic basalt. In the older districts there is a countless variety of narrow gloomy streets, many of them steep. The houses are mostly five or six storeys high, are covered with stucco made of a kind of pozzolana which hardens by exposure, and have large balconies and flat roofs. The castle of S. Elmo (S. Ermo, S. Erasmus), which dominates the whole city, had its origin in a fort (Belforte) erected by King Robert the Wise in 1343. The present building, with its rock-hewn fosses and massive ramparts, was constructed by Don Pedro de Toledo at the command of Charles V. in 1535, and was long considered practically impregnable. Damaged by lightning in 1857, it was afterwards restored, and is now a military prison. On a small island (I. del Salvatore, the Megaris of Pliny), now joined to the shore at the foot of the Pizzofalcone by an arch-supported causeway, stands the Castel dell’ Ovo (so called from its shape, though medieval legend associates the name with the enchanted egg on which the magician Virgil made the safety of the city to depend), which dates from 1154. The walls of its chapel were frescoed by Giotto; but the whole building was ruined by Ferdinand II. in 1495, and had to be restored in the 16th century. Castel Nuovo, a very picturesque building constructed near the harbour in 1283 by Charles I. of Anjou, contains between the round towers of its façade the triumphal arch erected in 1470 to Alphonso I. and renovated in 1905. It numbers among its chambers the Gothic hall of Giovanni Pisano in which Celestine V. abdicated the papal dignity. Castel del Carmine, founded by Ferdinand I. in 1484, was occupied by the populace in Masaniello’s insurrection, was used as a prison for the patriots of 1796, became municipal property in 1878, and is now a prison. The royal palace, begun in 1600 by the Count de Lemos, from designs by Domenico Fontana, partly burned in 1837, and since repaired and enlarged by Ferdinand II., is an enormous building with a sea frontage of 800 ft. and a main façade 554 ft. long and 95 ft. high, exhibiting the Doric, Ionic and Composite orders in its three storeys. The statues on the façade of the palace were erected by King Humbert I. in 1885, and represent the titular heads of the various dynasties which have reigned at Naples, beginning with Ruggiero the Norman (1130); followed by Frederick II. of Suabia (1197); Charles I. of Anjou (1266); Alfonso of Aragon (1442); Charles V. of Spain (1527); Charles III. (Bourbon) of Naples (1744); Gioacchino Murat (1808); and Victor Emmanuel II. (1861).

Naples is the see of a Roman Catholic archbishop, always a cardinal. The cathedral has a chapter of thirty canons, and of the numerous religious houses formerly existing very few have in whole or in part survived the suppression in 1868. The city is divided into fifty parishes purely for ecclesiastical purposes, and there are 237 Roman Catholic churches and 57 chapels.

Of the secular institutions in Naples none is more remarkable than the National Museum, formerly known as the Museo Borbonico. The building, begun in 1586 for vice-regal stables, and remodelled in 1615 for the university, was put to its present use in 1790, when Ferdinand IV. proclaimed it his private property independently of the crown, placed in it the Farnese collection which he had inherited from his father, and all the specimens from Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae, Puteoli, Paestum, &c., which till then had been housed in the palace at Portici, and gave it the name of Real Museo Borbonico. In 1860