Castel Nuovo
— — the white arch the dark towers hold.
Not only on a wall.
“Five round towers of dark piperno stone on the Naples waterfront, with a single white marble arch wedged between two of them: the triumphal arch the Aragonese set there in the 1450s. Behind the castle, the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius across the water. The arch is the singular thing: a Roman form done in early Renaissance marble, placed against a fortress meant to look heavy. It has weathered seven centuries of harbour wind. People still walk past it on their way to the ferry to Capri without quite registering what it is.
Castel Nuovo, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Castel Nuovo stands on Naples' waterfront, between the cruise terminal at Stazione Marittima and Piazza Municipio, a short walk from the port where ferries leave for Capri, Ischia and Procida. The castle was begun in 1279 under Charles I of Anjou as the royal seat of the Kingdom of Sicily; the current five-tower silhouette in dark piperno stone dates largely from the Aragonese rebuild begun by Alfonso V in 1442. Naples sits in the Campania region of southern Italy, on the western edge of the Bay of Naples, with Mount Vesuvius across the water some twelve kilometres east.
The castle's heaviness reads as dark grey-brown because the bulk is faced in piperno, a welded volcanic tuff quarried in the Campi Flegrei west of the city. Set between the western towers is the Arco di Trionfo, the triumphal arch of Alfonso of Aragon, built in white Carrara marble between 1453 and roughly 1471. The arch was designed and carved by Francesco Laurana, Pietro di Martino, Domenico Gagini and others, and is considered the first major work of Renaissance sculpture in southern Italy. Its two stacked arches combine Roman triumphal grammar with Aragonese heraldry; the relief at the top records Alfonso's entry into the city in February 1443.
The castle houses the Museo Civico di Castel Nuovo, run by the Comune di Napoli. The museum occupies the Sala dei Baroni, with Guillermo Sagrera's eight-pointed star vault completed in 1457, together with the Palatine Chapel and two upper-floor picture galleries. Entry is from Via Vittorio Emanuele III on the seaward side; the courtyard and the triumphal arch can be approached without a ticket. The museum is closed Sundays and several public holidays, with a standard admission fee in single digits of euros. Most visitors come straight from the port; the gangways at Stazione Marittima sit roughly two hundred metres from the gatehouse.