Naples at the court of the Bourbon

Day 1 – Arrival in Naples

Arrival by own means. Accomodation at a 3*/4* or 5* hotel in Naples. Rooms available in the afternoon.

Free dinner.

Overnight.

Day 2 – to choose between:

1) Napoli – Bourbon Court

Morning: Breakfast at the hotel.

The visit begins from the Royal Palace, centre of power in Naples and throughout southern Italy for over three centuries. The Palace, thanks to its own position, naturally lends itself to be the beating heart of the city and the museum inside the palace wants to promote the dialogue with the urban context as much as possible, rediscovering the role of a sumptuous palace, created to amaze the visitor as a mirror of royal power.

Inside the Palace it is possible to visit the Appartamento di Etichetta accesible via the majestic Grand Staircase defined as the most beautiful in Europe by Montesquieu. The Appartament is composed of more than 30 rooms including the Court Theatre, the Throne Room and the Royal Chapel, which contain precious furnishings and paintings from the Bourbon collection.

Move on to reach by foot the largest historical center in Europe, a World Heritage Site, it is a neighborhood with a thousand faces, where the Greco-Roman urban planning is still legible in the regular grid of the streets. You will continue on foot along the famous "Spaccanapoli", the ancient lower decumanus of the Greco-Roman city that seems to divide, "split", the city into two parts.

We will visit: the Cloister and the Church of Santa Chiara, commissioned by Roberto D’Angiò as a burial place for himself and his descendants and the splendid majolica cloister, a place of prayer but also of “escape” for the Poor Clares and above all the protagonist of a famous Neapolitan song; the Chapel of the Princes of Sangro of Sansevero, a temple of Freemasonry and esotericism, where we will admire the Veiled Christ.

Free Lunch, free time in the afternoon. Overnight Stay. 

2) The Bourbon splendors: the villas of the golden mile

Morning: Breakfast at the hotel. Meeting with the guide and departure by coach towards Portici.

The vision of Charles of Bourbon - king of Naples at 18 – will be revealed in the second day of the tour telling us more about the glories of a dynasty capable of transfroming Naples in a great capital, third in Europe after London and Paris. And it soon becomes a fundamental stop on the Grand Tour for European intellectuals. The young King Charles arrives in Naples and finds a kingdom in disastrous conditions, after 200 years of Spanish domination, but his great sense of state and, above all, his desire for redemption as the second son of the King of Spain, will make people remember him for many centuries to come.

We will visit the Royal Palace of Portici, witness to the love of the Bourbons for the beauty of this territory. The site was chosen as a summer residence by Charles and his wife Maria Amalia of Saxony, and it would later become, due to its proximity to Herculaneum, the first repository of findings from those first excavations that were a place of experimentation of techniques of a new science: archaeology.

Not far from the Royal Palace of Portici, in a suggestive position downstream from the Bourbon road of Calabrie, we will visit Villa Campolieto which was built by will of Prince Luzio De Sangro, Duke of Casacalenda. He entrusted the project and the execution of the works in 1755 to Mario Gioffredo who, forced to abandon the works around 1760, was replaced by Luigi Vanvitelli before the completion of the project in 1775 by the latter’s son Carlo.

The visit ends in Villa Giulia* in the eastern district of Barra, built in the ancient Pietrabianca farmhouse, today included in the Vesuvian territory of the Golden Mile.

* Note on Villa Giulia: the villa is a private residence still inhabited, the visit is subject to approval of the owners.

Expected return to the city around 2.00/2.30 pm.

Possibility of lunch with wine tasting at Cantina del Vesuvio.

3) Ercolano’s Wonders

Morning: Breakfast at the hotel. Meeting with the guide and departure by coach towards Ercolano, the ancient city of Herculaneum.

Already seriously damaged by the earthquake of 62 AD, it was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius, which covered it with a huge mass of mud, ash and other eruptive materials dragged by rainwater that, penetrating every opening, solidified into a compact layer 15-20 meters high. These particular circumstances, which led to the burial of Herculaneum, on one hand made and still make its excavation very difficult, on the other hand they allowed the conservation of highly perishable materials, such as papyrus and food, sealed in the dried mud.This sealing also protected materials such as structural wood, which would have been more perishable in the presence of stagnant water. The excavations of Herculaneum, together with those of Pompeii and Oplontis, have been included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites since 1997.

Stop for lunch in a selected restaurant.

After lunch on the way back visit to the National Railway Museum of Pietrarsa, the place where the history of the Italian railways was born: on October 3, 1839, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the first railway in Italy was inaugurated. 7411 meters of railway connecting Naples to Portici, another event that made Naples and the Kingdom a place of excellence in many fields. This is for us the conclusion of a day of memory of the glories of the past, which is and must be the pride of the present.

Return to Naples by coach.

*This option can be linked to the visit to the Royal Palace of Portici where archaeological remains of Herculaneum have been preserved.

Day 3 – Naples - Campi Flegrei: the land of Myth

Morning: Breakfast at the hotel.

Meeting with the guide and departure by coach. The itinerary will be dedicated to north area of Naples, separated from the center by the Posillipo hill: the Gulf of Pozzuoli, called since ancient times Campi “Flegrei”, from the Greek “phlaegreios”, burning, due to the lively volcanic activity. It is a fascinating land thanks to the variety of its landscapes and the Greeks landed there to found the first Greek colony in the West, Cuma. The Romans made it one of the richest provinces of their empire with the rich commercial port of Pozzuoli and Baia, an elegant holiday resort for the Emperors.

During the day we will visit the Sibyl's Cave in Cuma, home to mystery cults; the Mirabilis Pool, a water cistern of the ancient aqueduct of the Augustan era - a true masterpiece of Roman engineering - entirely dug into the rock; the Flavian Amphitheatre in Pozzuoli, among the oldest in the Roman world and the only one in which the underground areas are perfectly preserved.

Free lunch. Return to Naples.

Free time and overnight.

Day 4 – Departure

Breakfast at the hotel.                                 

Check-out and transfer by own means to the airport.

End of services.

 The visits order may change for operational needs without changing the content of the programme.

INCLUDED IN THE OFFER: 

• 3 nights with breakfast in a 3*/4* or 5* hotel
• Authorized guide in the language chosen for the guided tours
• Entrance ticket to the Treasure of San Gennaro, Pio Monte della Misericordia, Scavi di San Lorenzo
• Radio guides for 2 days

NOT INCLUDED IN THE OFFER:

• tourist tax per person/night to be paid on site
• Tips
• Travel to/from Naples
• Bus transfers
• Anything not mentioned in the “included in the offer” section

OPTIONAL:

• Tour leader
• Bus-Transfers
• Eventual extra meals
• Eventual extra entrances/ visits