Naples is full of artwork and architecture more than worthy of being seen. But it has also become an underground museum (and it is not referred to as “Underground Naples”) whose cost to visit it is 1.60 €, the price of the subway ticket. Now one of the most beautiful in the world. Its stations are real works of art by great artists. Here are some of the most suggestive.
Garibaldi station.
Michelangelo Pistoletto’s installations make it more than unique. The outdoor square is covered with a metal and glass structure with shops and stairs leading to the docks. Suspended escalators lead to the mirror wall where life-size people, waiting or moving passengers are portrayed. Images created by the Piedmontese artist that interact with real passengers immersing them in a completely unusual atmosphere.
Stazione Municipio (City Hall Station).
The Fountain of Neptune of the ‘500, better known as the Fountain of Medina and mainly the work of Michelangelo Naccherino and Pietro Bernini, is right near the entrance of the metro, as next is Molo Beverello the most important port in Naples and, above all, deposit of many archaeological finds. Àlvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura are the Portuguese architects in charge of designing and building the new metro station. The result is a structure in which lava stone and white plaster prevail, which give the whole the linear purity that characterizes it. Inside the video installation by the artist Michal Rovner, Passaggi, in which images of the Neapolitan city, paris and Jerusalem alternated with human figures flow, which gives the passenger a very suggestive and lively effect to the environment.
Stazione Università (University Station)
Karim Rashid and Alessandro Mendini designed the University Station in 2011 and is considered one of the most colorful and alive of line 1. Fuchsia and lime flowers decorate the walls, while in the underground entrance forecourt small boxes, black pillars and steel structures want to allude to the relationships between men and the synapses between the neurons of the brain. The aim is to highlight the centrality of communication in a dialogue between past and present and, in this, the works Synapsis, Ikon, Conversation profile, underlined by the presence, at the second level, of the figures of Dante and Beatrice are exemplary.
Stazione Toledo (Toledo railway station).
CNN and the Daily Telegraph have named Toledo Station as the most beautiful in Europe. Designed in 2012 by Oscar Tusquets Blanca Spanish architect is characterized by the work of Robert Wilson Crater de luz that recalls the sea in its various aspects also through the undulating walls connecting the interior with the outside. Also by the same artist there is a digital installation of 24 meters along the corridor entitled By the sea.. you and me. All immersed in Neapolitan archaeology with the remains of the Aragonese walls that surrounded the area in medieval times, and two mosaics with multiple colors reminiscent of a procession of San Gennaro and the works for the construction of the metro of 1884 and 1906.
There are only four of the art stations of the new Naples Metro, a museum available to everyone from where, despite passing in a hurry, you can not go out indifferent and a little less gloomy than what happens with other underground trains, and ready to clash with the sky of Naples.