Naples in October - Capodimonte

We want to avoid the throngs of weekend people so on Sunday morning we go to Real Bosco di Capodimonte Museum and Park. It's an easy walk straight up from where we are staying and we respect the Google maps prediction of less than 40 minutes. Nevertheless, it's not a particularly attractive walk, although I remind myself that many cities first thing on a Sunday morning are not at their best. Capodimonte is one of the reasons I was so keen to visit Naples. We've always liked looking at paintings, Andrea paints, after all, and during the first Coronavirus lockdown in Spring 2020 we watched a few programmes on art and are even more interested now.

Capodimonte has some superb collections and several rooms in the palace are pretty impressive in their own right.

The museum requires a whole day to do it justice, or probably more. Tickets are for the day which is good because you can go out for lunch or a coffee, which we do.  I do some research beforehand but still manage to get things wrong in the afternoon - various sections of the museum have different opening and closing times, so we just miss out on a section that closes at four, then spend time having a second look at our favourite paintings on the first floor which closes later when we could have been having another look at those on the second  floor which closes earlier....! If you go, check the website carefully, also because the paintings are arranged according to the collections, not chronologically across the different floors, there are also temporary collections which can be interesting and some rooms may be closed for maintenance or other reasons. The initial impact with the website can be confusing, there is just so much of interest, afterwards I realised that this is the most useful page because it clearly sets out what the collections are of and where they are. Wikipedia has a very good page in Italian, translate it as required because the page in English has nowhere near the same amount of information. Wikipedia also has a page cataloguing paintings and one of other works of art in Capodimonte  which specify where the various works should be, which is useful if you want to be sure to see a specific painting, although it's not always completely up to date. 

Anyway, we spend the whole morning looking at the Collezione Farnese, the Porcelain collection and the Royal Apartment on the first floor and then go out for our picnic lunch in the park. It's very pleasant  and there's a good view over Naples and as far as Capri from the Belvedere. 

There are security guards all over the place, so everything is clean and tidy and it's the ideal place to relax on a Sunday. Except someone forgot to mention that inexplicably the Capodimonte Museum and all its treasures are right under the flight path for Naples airport!

After our picnic lunch we go to a bar just outside Porta Grande for a Sfogliatella and a coffee. €7.50 seems a lot to sit outside in a grubby street. In the afternoon we see the second floor in particular Le arti a Napoli dal ‘200 al ‘700 or Galleria Napoletana where there is the famous Flagellazione di Cristo by Caravaggio, Contemporary art also on the second floor and a temporary exhibition on architecture as well as a quick look at the Armour on the first floor.  For our second coffee break we stick to the bar inside the museum.

The beautiful pictures (and other things) are too many to mention so I will just choose  a couple of my favourites....

Madonna col Bambino e due angeli by Botticelli

Detail from Madonna del Divino amore by Raffaello

It's getting on for dusk by the time we plod back to the apartment, tired, but, yes, happy, so much beauty in one day and one place....