This baroque palace, built around 1728 by the architect Ferdinando Felice, remains one of the most spectacular in the city with its marvelous staircase which rises to the heavens. It is in the heart of the popular district of Sanita, home to the actor Toto who was born there in 1898.
At the back of a main courtyard on the threshold of a busy and crowded street, stands the imposing facade of Palazzo San Felice. Its monumental staircase ad ali di falco “in falcon wings”, from which the light coming from the garden gushes in transparency, is the work of the virtuoso architect Ferdinando San Felice in the early 18th century...
« At the end of the courtyard, built in front of the facade, the famous Sanfelice staircase, a separate building, a building in itself, more than a simple staircase, with its covered ramps that beat in the dim light and bow like the pinnacles of a gigantic trifold winged bird. The empty arches, the shadow holes alternate with the solid pillars, the black pipernes of Vesuvius with Carrara marble. »
Dominique Fernandez, Porporino ou les mystères de Naples
The Sanita is part of Borgo dei Vergini, a district of extraordinary archaeological and historical richness. Close to the three most important museums of Naples; the Archaeological Museum, the Museo di Capodimonte and the Museum of Contemporary Art, the district contains the fabulous Hellenistic necropolis of Neopoli, the Roman Aqueduct Serino, the astonishing church of the Sanita with its catacombs, the monumental complex of Vincenziano...
Bubbling, effervescent, noisy and anarchic, the Sanita is one of the poorest and richest districts of Naples. Of a dazzling vitality where the freedom of each one is sacred.
“Naples is the most mysterious city in Europe, the only city in the ancient world that did not perish like Ilion, like Nineveh, like Babylon. It is the only city in the world that did not sink into the immense shipwreck of ancient civilizations. Naples is a Pompeii that has never been buried. It is not a city: it is a world. The ancient world, pre-Christian, remains intact under the surface of the modern world.” The Skin, Malaparte...
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