What to do and see in San Ferdinando, Campania: The Best Things to do

By appoinment. CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE UNTIL 2 SETTEMBER 2019 The coral and cameos jewellery museum Ascione is in Naples inside the Galleria Umberto I building, opposite the opera-Teatro di San Carlo and near the Royal Palace of Naples. Here you can visit a museum founded as a tribute to the past generations engaged in this successful activity by Ascione Family. It also includes a didactic and an artistic sections, displaying not only hundreds of jewels as witnesses of red coral and Cameo manufacture from 1805 to 1950, but also ancient documents, tools, machinery and pictures to revive and to go on along a journey started 150 years ago.

Enchanting scenery that unfolds to the eyes of visitors, a secret place full of history and magic atmosphere.An emotional journey that conducts visitors in the new section of the underground of Naples. It is situated in Vico del Grottone 4, from to 150 mt. to Plebiscito Square. Until a few years ago it wasa veterinary laboratory, now is the entrance of the Bourbon Tunnel. A staircase with 8 ramps, 33 yards deep descending into the belly of Chiaia. The second entry is in Via Domenico Morelli,40, through the crosswalk of “Quick parking”.The Tunnel was built in 1853 by Ferdinand II of Bourbon, who, concerned about the outbreak of rebellion, he asked for an escape from the Royal Palace to the barrack in Via della Pace, now Via Morelli. The work was uncompleted and, during the second World War, was used by residents of the area as a military hospital, later becoming the Hall Judicial Deposit.The war left its mark even in the subsoil. That’s way there are handwrite, folding beds, messages of wish and desolation of those who lived it and still maintains its memory. Along the tunnel thereare also the evidences, 530 meters, where visitors can discover the history of real life. Through the spacious streets, it’s easy reachable the network of tunnels and cisterns of seventeenth-century,large buildings, where worked the "pozzari", the only connoisseur of Naples underground.The show is stunning, but that's not finished. On Via Morelli appear statues dating back to fascist period and many cars and motorcycles, abandoned for years, freed from piles of rubbish, arranged and illuminated ad hoc for the route.Nothing is left to chance, even lighting, perfectly integrated with the path of the visitors.Since today everything is possible to visit. Five years ago the scenery was completely different.Rubbish, degradation, wastes of all kinds covered the reliquaries.

This square of the people (plebiscito) is the largest in Naples and the site of two admirable monuments of the city: the Naples Royal Palace and the Church of San Francesco di Paola.

The Teatro di San Carlo was designed by the architects Giovanni Antonio Medrano and Angelo Carasale for the monarch since Charles wanted a new and larger theatre for Naples to replace the old and dilapidated Teatro San Bartolomeo of 1621. On 12 February 1816 the San Carlo was destroyed by fire. The Theatre was re-designed by the architect Antonio Niccolini and rebuilt within ten months on order of King Ferdinand IV. In 1845 there was additional refurbishment and, by 1854, the theatre's interior appearance changed to the now-traditional red and gold.Now carefully restored to its former splendour, the San Carlo is the oldest working theatre in Europe.

This is the high-rent district of Naples where via Chiaia is located, the Madison Avenue of the city.