Teatro San Carlo

On Saturday afternoon we visited the Teatro San Carlo on a guided tour


Waiting for the tour to start...



There were only another 2 people plus the guide of course, who was really good. She was informative and full of anecdotes, and fun. And did the tour in English too for Adrian.

The San Carlo is the oldest opera house in Europe, older than La Fenice, La Scala and Covent Garden she said. 
And it is really beautiful too.


The ceiling is in fact a huge canvas, that hides a resonance chamber.


This is the royal box with the coat of arms of the Savoy family which replaced the Bourbons' when Italy was unified in 1861.

But the Bourbons' coat of arms is back high over the stage. In the 1980 earthquake, the Savoy coat of arms fell down and they found the old one underneath.




Now it's all red but apparently in the past it was blue - the colour of the royals.
The orchestra pit was raised because of a concert in the evening; the stage is behind that curtain and it is massive, deeper than the stalls!

Chandeliers and mirrors in the foyer

A trip to Cuma

This morning we travelled to Cuma (or Cumae in English) to see the ruins of the oldest Greek settlement in western Europe (8th century B.C.) I've always wanted to visit it because of the legend of the sibyl

It wasn't a smooth journey. The Circumflegrea railway



is supposed to stop at Cuma station 4 times a day and the entry to the archeological site should be open to coincide with the train. Well it wasn't - the station is in the middle of nowhere and there was no one there. To cut a long story short we had to walk a long way to the main entrance on the other side of the hill, trying to avoid the large puddles.

By the time we got to the site, we were already exhausted!

Still the sibyl's "grotto" (and dating to the 4th/3rd century BC) was quite impressive to see!





And it doesn't matter that it wasn't really her grotto but a probably a military tunnel!

We then walked up to the acropolis



from where you get a nice view of the coastline,



the island of Ischia



and lake Miseno.

The journey back was almost as eventful.

The bus back to Fusaro was 30 mins late and by the time it arrived, it was raining. In Fusaro we had a look from the shore at the Casino built on the lake for one of the Bourbon kings. Very nice.

The train back to Naples couldn't reach Montesanto due to a demonstration (a group of people had occupied the tracks - I don't what they were protesting against) but we found an alternative.

Back in town we visited a couple of palazzi and later the fantastic National Museum, but this is a subject for another post....