Greek Parthenope that kept ruling southern Italy
Naples, capital of Campania and home to about 905,000 people, is the largest city in southern Italy and one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban areas on earth. Greeks settled Parthenope there, refounded it as Neápolis, and it later ruled a kingdom for five centuries.
Greek sailors built a small trading post called Parthenope, named for a Siren, and Cumaean settlers had enlarged it by the eighth century BC. In the sixth century BC the town was refounded as Neápolis, the new city, and grew into a leading member of Magna Graecia. Its walls turned back Hannibal during the Punic Wars, and under Rome its people kept speaking Greek while emperors such as Tiberius and Claudius holidayed there and Virgil studied nearby.
The last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was exiled to Naples by Odoacer in the fifth century. The Byzantine general Belisarius retook it from the Ostrogoths in 536 by slipping troops in through an aqueduct. An independent duchy followed, lasting until 1137, when its final duke, Sergius VII, submitted to Roger II and Naples became part of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Frederick II founded its university in 1224 to train secular administrators, and after 1266 the Angevin Charles I shifted the royal seat from Palermo to Naples, living in the Castel Nuovo.
From 1282 to 1816 Naples headed its own kingdom, then the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies until Italy unified in 1861. Caravaggio’s arrival in the 17th century helped make it a Baroque capital, and the Neapolitan School shaped opera buffa and the modern conservatory. The Fascist regime rebuilt parts of the city between 1925 and 1936, but Allied bombs later caused severe damage, and from 27 to 30 September 1943 residents rose against German occupiers just before Allied troops entered on 1 October.
Today the historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the craft of the Neapolitan pizzaiolo sits on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list. Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Royal Palace of Caserta lie close by, and the port ranks among Europe’s most important.
Source: Naples
