48 Fun Facts About Naples

Naples is the capital of which Italian region?

Campania's capital ruled a kingdom covering all of southern Italy for nearly 600 years, until unification in 1861 reduced it to a regional seat.

The first Greek colony on the site of Naples was named after which mythological figure?

Parthenope, a Siren, is said to have drowned herself when her song failed to lure Odysseus, and her body washed up where the first colony was founded.

What does Neapolis, the Greek name that became Naples, mean?

New town it literally was: Greek settlers built it about 600 BC beside an older colony, which came to be called Palaepolis, the 'old city'.

Which boy emperor, deposed in 476, was sent to live in Naples?

Romulus Augustulus was spared for his youth, given a pension by the general who deposed him, and housed in a villa on the islet where the city's seafront castle now stands.

How did the Byzantine general Belisarius get into Naples in 536?

Through an aqueduct: a soldier exploring the dry channel found a gap in the rock, engineers quietly widened it, and troops slipped in by night to open the city from inside.

Which French prince, brother of Louis IX, made Naples his capital in place of Palermo?

Charles I of Anjou conquered the south in the 1260s with the pope's backing, built the Castel Nuovo as his seat, and filled the city with French officials and Gothic churches.

Naples's Federico II, founded in 1224, is regarded as the world's oldest institution of what kind?

State-funded secular university: Emperor Frederick II decreed it into being before it had a single student, then forbade his subjects to study anywhere else.

Which 1282 uprising against French rule split the southern kingdom, leaving Naples with only the mainland?

The Sicilian Vespers began at evening prayers outside Palermo on Easter Monday, when a brawl with French soldiers turned into a massacre and the island went over to Aragon.

Which hook-nosed commedia dell'arte clown, a folk symbol of Naples, is the ancestor of Mr Punch?

Pulcinella crossed to England with Italian puppeteers in the 1660s, where his name was shortened to Punch and he gained a wife called Judy.

By 1600 Naples was often ranked Europe's second-largest city, behind only which capital?

Paris is the usual answer, on rankings that leave out Ottoman Constantinople; Naples had grown from about 100,000 people to 250,000 in a century.

What was the trade of Masaniello, who led Naples's 1647 revolt against Spanish rule?

Fisherman Masaniello was 27 when a new tax on fruit made him the people's leader; within days hired assassins had murdered him, and an 1828 opera retold his story.

Which disease killed about half the people of Naples in 1656?

Plague reached the city in April 1656, was checked only by sealing off the poorer districts, and left at least 150,000 Neapolitans dead.

Which town near Naples holds the vast Bourbon palace begun in 1752 to rival Versailles?

Caserta's palace has some 1,200 rooms, yet the king who ordered it left to take the Spanish throne in 1759 and never spent a night there.

In 1839 Naples became the first city on the Italian peninsula to have what?

A railway: the king himself opened the 7 km line to his palace at Portici, worked by English-built locomotives, and 131,000 passengers rode it in the first three months.

After which city's 1815 congress did the restored Bourbon king merge Naples and Sicily into the Two Sicilies?

Vienna's congress redrew Europe after Napoleon and backed the Bourbon return to Naples, won by Austrian arms; in December 1816 Ferdinand fused his two crowns into one kingdom.

Whose Expedition of the Thousand ended Bourbon rule in Naples?

Giuseppe Garibaldi entered Naples on 7 September 1860 to cheering crowds; then, a republican by conviction, he handed the whole south to a king, Victor Emmanuel II.

Why did King Ferdinand II have the Bourbon Tunnel dug beneath Naples in 1853?

To guard against a revolt: after the riots of 1848 he wanted a hidden road between palace and barracks; never finished, it sheltered thousands from bombs in the Second World War.

The Four Days of Naples in September 1943 was an uprising against whom?

German occupation forces had ordered the city's men into forced labour; four days of street fighting drove them out, and the Allies arrived to find Naples already free.

Naples lies between Mount Vesuvius and which other volcanic region?

The Phlegraean Fields are a vast caldera whose ground slowly rises and sinks, a restlessness called bradyseism that has badly damaged the port town at its centre.

Which two Roman towns near Naples were destroyed by Vesuvius in AD 79?

Pompeii and Herculaneum stayed buried for more than 16 centuries until Bourbon-sponsored digging began in 1738, and the finds reshaped European taste.

Who is the patron saint of Naples?

Januarius, San Gennaro in Italian, was by tradition a bishop beheaded around 305 under Diocletian; emigrants carried his feast to New York's Little Italy, where it fills the streets each September.

What do crowds gather in Naples Cathedral to watch the dried blood of the city's patron saint do?

It liquefies, believers say, inside a sealed glass vial; when it stays solid, Neapolitans take it as a warning of trouble ahead.

According to legend, what did a Roman poet turned sorcerer hide beneath Naples's seafront castle?

A magical egg, the story goes, lies hidden in the foundations, and the fortress cannot fall while it stays whole; hence the name Castel dell'Ovo, the Egg Castle.

Emperor Tiberius spent most of his final decade ruling Rome from Villa Jovis on which island off Naples?

Capri kept Tiberius away from Rome for years, leaving the city to his prefect Sejanus, who used the emperor's absence to make his own bid for power.

Naples's Teatro di San Carlo holds which distinction among the world's opera houses?

Oldest continuously active opera venue: it opened in 1737, decades before La Scala, and when fire gutted it in 1816 the king had it rebuilt within ten months.

The shroud on Naples's Veiled Christ looks like see-through cloth but was carved from the same block of what?

Marble: the patron's contract demanded a shroud cut from the same block as the body, and Antonio Canova later said he would give ten years of his life to have made it.

Which Italian dynasty's art collection forms the core of the Naples National Archaeological Museum?

The Farnese sculptures came to Naples because the family died out in the male line and its treasures passed, through Elisabetta Farnese, to her son, the city's Bourbon king.

Which Naples Metro station, opened in 2012, has been called Europe's most beautiful?

Toledo station ran into an underground aquifer during building, so its Spanish designer made water the theme, with mosaics that deepen from ochre to sea blue on the way down.

Whose 17th-century career made Naples a capital of the Baroque?

The city also fostered the School of Posillipo and Neapolitan Liberty, its version of Art Nouveau.

The art of the Neapolitan pizzaiolo is inscribed on which UNESCO list?

Intangible Cultural Heritage status came in 2017 for the craft itself: four stages of working the dough and baking it, with a turn of the baker's wrist, in a wood-fired oven.

Legend says a Naples pizza for Queen Margherita had toppings matching what?

The Italian flag: red tomato, white mozzarella and green basil; yet writers had described the same toppings in Naples decades earlier, and historians doubt the royal story.

Along with the Margherita, which is the other typical Neapolitan pizza?

Marinara carries no seafood and no cheese: just tomato, garlic, oregano and oil, toppings said to have suited sailors because they kept well at sea.

Which rum-soaked cake, born in France from a Polish original, became a favourite of Naples pastry shops?

Babà reached Naples from France, where an exiled Polish king is credited with first soaking a dry cake in spirit; today it is a staple of the city's pastry shops.

What shape is the sfogliatella, the flaky pastry of Naples?

Shell-shaped and ridged, the crisp 'riccia' gets its layers from dough rolled and folded again and again; a smooth shortcrust cousin, the 'frolla', skips all that work.

Where was the Sfogliatella Santa Rosa, ancestor of the modern pastry, created?

A monastery in Conca dei Marini, on the Amalfi coast, kept the recipe for generations until a Naples pastry chef obtained it and began selling the pastry in 1818.

The song 'Funiculì, Funiculà' was written in 1880 to celebrate what?

The first cable car up Vesuvius, a funicular opened in 1880, inspired a song that sold a million copies of sheet music in a year; the 1944 eruption destroyed the line.

Which Argentine footballer joined Napoli for a world-record fee in 1984?

Diego Maradona was unveiled to some 75,000 fans in July 1984 and went on to lead a traditionally weak club to its first two Serie A titles.

Which secret criminal society grew to power in Naples during the 19th century?

Camorra bosses were once so entrenched that the Bourbon regime recruited them into its police; unified Italy spent decades trying to crush the society and never quite managed it.

Which Naples-born comic was known as the 'prince of laughter'?

Totò, offstage Antonio de Curtis, grew up poor in the Sanità quarter as a marquis's unacknowledged son, and at 35 had himself adopted by a penniless nobleman to inherit a long list of titles.

Sophia Loren grew up in which seaside town near Naples?

Pozzuoli was bombed in the Second World War, and one raid left her with a scar on her chin; as a teenager she entered a beauty contest and was soon in Rome looking for film work.

Which pseudonymous novelist set My Brilliant Friend and its three sequels in a poor Naples neighbourhood?

Elena Ferrante has kept her identity secret since her 1992 debut, saying finished books have no need of their authors, while the quartet has sold in the millions.

Which Neapolitan craft tradition produces elaborate Christmas nativity scenes?

The presepe has a street of its own, Via San Gregorio Armeno, where workshops turn out crib figures all year, each season adding figurines of people in the news.

Naples's L'Orientale university began in 1732 as a college for young Christians brought from which country?

China was where its founder, the missionary Matteo Ripa, spent over a decade as a painter at the emperor's court; he came home with four young teachers and opened the 'Chinese College'.

Naples rose in revolt in 1547 when its Spanish viceroy tried to introduce which institution?

The Inquisition was known for seizing the property of those it tried, so the nobles led the rising themselves, and the emperor ordered his viceroy to call it off.

Which Roman writer described the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius in letters, after his uncle died trying to rescue survivors?

Pliny the Younger watched from across the bay as a teenager while his uncle sailed towards the eruption and died on the shore; his two letters are the only surviving eyewitness account.

Which Roman poet, later remembered in Naples as a sorcerer, is by tradition buried in the city?

Virgil wrote his Georgics in Naples, and a Roman tomb beside an ancient road tunnel on the city's western edge has been venerated as his for centuries.

Which tenor, born in Naples in 1873, became one of the first global stars of recorded music?

Enrico Caruso was coolly received at his home city's opera house in 1901 and vowed never to sing in Naples again, a promise he kept even as the world's best-paid singer.

Naples is Italy's third-largest city by population, behind Rome and which other?

Milan and Rome alone outrank it today, a reversal of the 1600s, when Naples was the largest city in Italy and one of the largest in Europe.