For today’s post, we are going to climb the Vomero, the other hill of Naples, the one that does not have smoke coming out of its ears.
Or rather, I should say, we were going to climb the Vomero, because that was the original scenario.
We wanted to tell you all about the Salita del Petraio, the scenic stairway up the Vomero that was built during the 16th century in the tracks of a much older footpath …
Take the stairway to Vomero for Naples At Your Feet
… before taking a closer look at the Vomero quarter itself on top of the hill, at the pedestrianized shopping district of Via Scarlatti, …
… the lush subtropical gardens around Piazza Vanvitelli …
… and the posh residential streets on the west of the hill, near the Metro station Quattro Giornate.
After all, If you want to find out everything there is to find out about Naples, this is the place to go. Naples may be to picturesque poverty what New York is to skyscrapers, but there is a lot of other stuff besides. (New York is not all about skyscrapers either.)
But then we realized that it would be so much more attractive to descend the Salita rather than to climb it, to walk into the grand panorama of Naples …
… instead of away from it: which would be, we realized, the equivalent of attending a great theatrical performance only to then turn your back on it.
So, for our way up the Vomero hill, we decided to take the funicolare railway from the downtown station of Montesanto (you can purchase tickets in the hall of the station from the tobacconist).
We recommend you do the same, descending at Morghen station and then walking around the Vomero first before going anywhere else.
Do not miss the Castello d’Elmo (the most visible feature of the Vomero when you stand in downtown Naples), which was built in the 13th century as a royal residence and then extended over the centuries into a military fortress, …
… worth the detour not least because it offers you splendid views all over the town.
Once you have explored the Vomero quarter, make your way back to Via Annibale Caccavello (near the Morghen station) and the intersection with Via Gradini del Petraio, which leads you straight into the near-eponymous Salita (gradini is Italian for steps).
The Salita has its origins in antiquity, when the top of the Vomero hill was still used as farmland. The course of the Salita follows an ancient brook.
Thousands of years ago, people and small businesses began to settle on the banks of this rivulet, and eventually, these houses were connected by steps, small squares and ramps. Much of this ancient structure has been preserved, even though all the old houses have long disappeared.
But even today, the area of the Salita is one of the Neapolitan districts with the widest range of architectural styles and periods, from pre-WWI-villas …
… and lovingly decorated middle-class homes …
… to working-class homes in the quartieri popolari, mainly in the lower sections of the Salita near the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
The best thing about the Salita, however, are the views: the ever-changing panoramas across town and the bay of Naples with peeks of Mount Vesuvius and the island of Capri.
“Like a giant amphitheater, the wonderful city with its intense buzz lies at my feet,” wrote the painter Paul Klee who walked up these very stairs to his hotel (Pensione Haas at the top of the stairway) when he was a young man in the years before WWI.
Klee continues: “The sea is wonderfully blue and calm. The city is a lively picture of clarity, with blocks of colourful facades, white streets and sections of dark green parks, both in light and darkness. We are exalted by joy, hovering between shining spheres, which have become the center of a world of shapes and colours.”
Naples may have changed a lot over the past 100 years, but the joy that Paul Klee talks about can still be experienced today on the Salita del Petraio.
