There are several ways of discovering a city. For Naples, we suggest to discover the city through its art.
Don’t worry: we are not proposing to explore the city by walking from one Caravaggio to the next. We invite you instead to follow us on a stroll through Napoli’s unique open air art museum, which is not only free to visit but also doubles up as the city’s main public transport hub: the Naples subway system, the Metro dell’Arte, is a project without a rival anywhere in the world.
I said that this unique open space is free to visit, but we strongly recommend to shell out 4.50 Euros for a one-day travel pass: for one because you will not see everything unless you get access to the platforms, and for another, because this is the most convenient way of connecting the different rooms of the museum – sorry: its stations.
Discovering Naples through the Metro dell’Arte
In total, nearly 20 of these stations have either been conceived as integrated artistic spaces or generously decorated with individual works.
For the purpose of our post, we will concentrate on the most interesting ones – and the ones with the best hinterland, because we invite you to explore the area around each station with a little walk that can be a 10-minute-long excursion or a thorough exploration of several hours, depending on your personal preferences and the number of things to see.
After all, we are going to discover the city THROUGH its art, not just the art. It is also nice to see some daylight every once in a while and to sample the street life for which Naples is rightly famous.
We start at Napoli’s central train station, beginning our journey at the adjacent metro station that has been named Garibaldi after the public square in front of it. Napoli Centrale and the subway station share a common entrance-hall-plus-shopping-centre one floor down from the street level.
This hall is already fairly futuristic, …
… but the real fun starts another level down in the metro station with its six-lane escalator highways and an interior space of chrome-plated surfaces that is criss-crossed by boulders of polished steel. The whole scenario appears to come straight out of Metropolis.
Go to Line no. 1 – which is where most of the Metro dell’Arte stations are located – and descend at the next station (Duomo) whose understated elegance provides an interesting contrast to the loud flamboyance of Garibaldi.
Duomo station is located in the heart of the Pendino district, one of the city’s few quarters that is dominated by buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is one part of Naples where you feel you might be in Paris or Milan.
We suggest you take a walk up Via Duomo, perhaps up to the Duomo itself, a distance of about 500 metres.
Behind the church, the scene becomes more lively and raucous, and you will soon reach the first of the three Decumani, the city’s parallel high streets for the last 2500 years.
Before you can lose yourself in the glorious chaos of the Decumani, it may be a good idea to head back to the metro station, because we still have many other things to see – beginning with the next stop, Università, which has been themed around science (the statue in the entrance hall has been inspired by the synapses of the human brain) …
… and technology. Take a look at the wall on your way out of the station: all those words written on the tiles have something to do with computers.
Then stroll down Corso Umberto, one of the city’s few broad and modern boulevards. Once you have reached the building which has given the station its name and its theme (the HQ of the University, which was established in 1224, were moved here in the 19th century), …
… it may be time to turn around because there are more interesting places to visit along the metro tracks – starting in and around the Municipio station …
… which has been composed in a palette of mahogany and various shades of brown around monumental straights and diagonals that cut through vast interior spaces.
The dimensions of the station interiors are echoed by their external surroundings: the first thing you will notice when leaving through the port-facing exit (at least on most days during the tourist season), …
… is the sight of the tastefully proportioned 1930s harbour building sandwiched (and dwarfed) by two large swimming hotels, a monumental metaphor for the city’s struggle to defend its soul against the pressures of modern tourism.
Turn around for more monuments …
… such as the (somewhat misleadingly named) Castelo Nuovo, built in the 13th century, and the skyline of “Royal Naples” with its palazzi and grand architectural statements around the Piazza Plebiscito. (Municipio is the nearest metro station to all of this.)
The next stop on our tour is probably the only one on the line where most visitors get off the train because they want to get a closer look at the station itself rather than its urban environment.
Toledo, after all, has been declared the Most Beautiful Metro Station In The World by both CNN and the Daily Telegraph – and you will not find many things on which the liberal cable news operator and the house organ of Britain’s Conservative Party can so readily agree.
Toledo is the most prominent example for a station in the Metro dell’Arte project that is not just decorated by artworks but where all the ornamental features are elements of a single artistic vision. And while beauty certainly lies in the eyes of the beholding passenger, it is clear that Toledo is the most popular of Napoli’s metro stations. It is also the one that most looks as if it had been conceived by Gaudì.
We suggest to turn right out of the station and to continue on foot up Via Toledo, the city’s main shopping street. The streets on your left hand side already belong to the Spagnoli quarter, the city’s most bustling and anarchic.
If you want to get a brief flavour of what life feels like over there, you might as well take advantage of the opportunity, but we recommend to leave the Spagnoli aside for the time being (for another day trip) …
… and to continue straight to Piazza Dante and its metro station at the northern end of Via Toledo.
On your way down to the platform, you may try to decipher the long quote from a book by the poet after whom both piazza and station were named (a neon sculpture on the wall) – or reflect on the train tracks and items of clothing that Jannis Kounellis combined in his meditation on the nature of art, the realities of life and travel.
Time for a break! Join us again next week for more art, the realities of life and travel – plus a few surprises – when we follow Line no. 1 on its way out of the Centro Storico.
