The Maschio Angioino in Naples

The Maschio Angioino rise between the harbour and the seat of the Neapolitan administration, it controls all the square, Piazza Municipio, and it sight arrives as far as via Caracciolo. During the Angioini domination, it was a beautiful castle and a cultural centre where artists as Giotto and great writers as Petrarca met. Succesively, during the Aragona’s family reign, it became a fortress. It’s very interesting the history of the undergrounds, here there were the prisons and the prisoners mysteriously disappeared. Only after several years it was discovered that a crocodile entered into the prisons by an hole and it transported the prisoners into the sea, making them disappear. Nowadays the castle is a civic museum and, above all in summertime, a place where a lot of spectacles and cultural events take place. The museum path comprehends the Armory room, the Palatina Chapel (or Santa Barbara Chapel), and the first and the second floor of the south part of the castle, the Carlo V room and the Loggia room, the latter is the seat of the cultural events. The Palatina Chapel was frescoed by Giotto and his disciples with images representing Bible stories. At the entrance of the Castle, give a look to the arch, which celebrates the conquest of the Reign of Naples by Alfonso d’Aragona in 1443.