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Ann Radcliffe set her best-known novel, The Italian, in Naples. There are numerous Gothic sites just a short wander from the famed Via Toledo shopping street.
seas and gorging on nouvelle Italian
castle keep, a shadowy ruin and creepy,
suburb called Secondigliano. I crossed it
seafood. I paid a few euros and toured
robed stalkers. The plot is simple enough:
off the to-do list, reluctantly.
the castle’s white corridors alone, seeking
A young nobleman of Naples falls in love
signs of Walpole’s ghosts, peering into
with a girl of whom his mother strongly
worth a visit, if only because searching
small, empty, barred rooms, any one of
disapproves. The mother hires an evil
for them allows one to wander the city’s
which could have been a dungeon. On the
monk to do away with her, but the monk
streets, noting the many other Gothic
outside, it is a photogenic and perfectly
discovers that the girl is actually his
charms of Naples that Radcliffe missed.
preserved white fortress. But its turrets,
daughter – the product of an illicit affair.
The book’s lovers, Vivaldi and Ellena, first
gunwales and wide, waterless moat attest
The novel opens with an Englishman
Radcliffe’s other Neapolitan sites are
lay eyes on each other at the church of
to the inhabitants’ defensive terror of the
surveying the Naples church of Santa
San Lorenzo Maggiore, which still stands
invader hundreds of years ago.
Maria del Pianto, which Radcliffe
in Naples’ historic centre – a yellow and
wrote housed “the very ancient convent
grey hulk with an archaeological site
A SHORT flight or a five-hour train trip
of the order of the Black Penitents.”
underneath it.
west across the heel of Italy to Naples
Contemporary visitors can test Radcliffe’s
allows ample time to dig into the works
Gothic imagination against the lively
for my trip I took along The Marble Faun,
of a lesser-known Gothic master,
reality of the teeming city. The church of
by Hawthorne. Hawthorne was reaching
Radcliffe. She was a reclusive
Santa Maria del Pianto is still there, but
the end of his career as a master of the
Englishwoman who like Walpole was
it’s not on any tourist map. It does still
psychological and supernatural horrors of
celebrated in her day for novels, many of
exist, but in what is now a crime-infested
Puritan New England, and this novelistic
Rome is rife with Gothic locations, and
which were set in Italy, that pit seemingly supernatural forces of evil, often associated with Catholicism or small-time feudal tyrants, against guileless young women and their brave, thwarted lovers. Radcliffe’s best-known novel, The Italian, takes place in 18th-century
“Radcliffe’s best-known novel, The Italian, takes place in 18th-century Naples. Almost every page contains a castle keep, a shadowy ruin and creepy, robed stalkers.”
Naples. Almost every page contains a Portfolio