Excape at the Neapolitan Real Albergo dei Poveri of records and memories

One of the most worthwhile cultural escapes in Naples is certainly a visit to the Real Albergo dei Poveri, partially reopened to embrace the exhibition Prologo. L'Albergo dei Poveri e la memoria delle cose, curated by Laura Valente, after the very significant, though not yet fully completed, restoration of what was one of the largest buildings in all of Europe when it was erected in 1751 with a monumental façade 385 metres long and 42 metres high, comprising five floors and countless courtyards and gardens. It was built by King Charles III of Bourbon and his wife Maria Amalia of Saxony to house or rather hide orphans, street urchins, the poor, deaf-mutes and other sick people. Alexandre Dumas also visited it and wrote about it. This exhibition (open until 6 March) is housed in the monumental refectory where one is emotionally touched by the beds, gamelles, and other artefacts and traces of that suffering humanity that were found during the RAP's clean-up work. These real-life documents are placed in dialogue with the works of artists Norma Jeane, Antonella Romano, Mimmo Jodice and Luciano Romano. In the other space already recovered within this majestic complex designed in Piazza Carlo III by architect Ferdinando Fuga, one is joyously darted by the photographs exhibited in Napoli Explosion (until 8 March), an astonishing iconographic and magmatic testimony of the effects produced on the Neapolitan city by the New Year's Eve fireworks recorded on the summit of Monte Faito by Mario Amura: the photographer elevates fireworks to works of art like a Jackson Pollock of the lens.