Today was a good day for walking at last. This stage covers the northeastern part of the Balmain Peninsula, a roughly rectangular peninsula that runs northeast-southwest. The first part is along Louisa Road to Yurulbin (formerly Long Nose) Point - a half-kilometre neck of land just wide enough for a road down the middle and a row of big houses going down to the water on either side. Near the end there is an old, pink house called Louisa, so I guess that's how the road got its name. Here are some of the Louisa Road houses (and their flowers).




You can see the water (though it came out a bit glary) that this house overlooks.


Some architect went mad on this one!




The ferry wharf at Yurulbin Pt. Just off here is a hole that forms the deepest part of the entire harbour.


There's a small park at the end of the point where you can look across Snails Bay towards the former Caltex storage depot at Ballast Pt.


And directly across the harbour is the still-used Shell refinery at Gore Cove (where I was way back in September).

The Balmain loop is very large. Given that I have to double back to the car each time, it will probably take me 4 weeks to get around it. Today I walked from the Iron Cove Bridge northwards, more or less along the western foreshore of the Balmain peninsula to Birchgrove and back via Darling Street. Since much of the foreshore has been privatised, this involved a large amount of going up and down stairs and zig-zag paths on the relatively steep cliff. This necessity to zig-zag meant that I didn't cover a huge distance. The weather was quite windy, otherwise it would've been too hot.

The housing development known as Balmain Shore, located on the site of an old power station. I absolutely could not stand to live in a place like this.

(  16 pictures of Balmain, Birchgrove and Rozelle )

Iron Cove is one of the larger bays in Sydney Harbour that I've encountered on my walks so far. It is the estuary of Iron Cove Creek (now a concrete drain) and is about 3.5 km long and a few hundred metres wide. Iron Cove Bridge is also the fourth of the seven bridges on the Harbour Circle walk.

Since it didn't matter much where I started, I parked the car down by the southern end of the former Rozelle Hospital (I see that last year, although I took pictures of Rozelle Hospital, I only posted about it's grander neigbour Callan Park) at the Leichhardt Rowing Club. I set out in an anti-clockwise direction along the foreshore.

( lots )

I discovered that there is a lot of art deco in Canterbury. I emerged from the path along Cooks River onto Canterbury Road in front of this rather elegant building:


It's obviously a former cinema, but what on earth does "Mytilenian" mean? "My Tile Shop"? After I got home I googled and found the Mytilenian Brotherhood. Mytilene is apparently an alternative name for the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea (althought the Mytilenians studiously avoid transliterating the Greek B into an English b, preferring instead to render the name as Lesvos - which is, no doubt, phonetically correct). Just imagine if they'd called their society the "Lesbian Sisterhood"! Except for the fact that the Brotherhood was founded as early as 1925, I'd be tempted to think the name was a deliberate joke. I mean, why did they have to come up with "Brotherhood"?

Yesterday I went for a long ramble.

High St, North Sydney is by no means a High Street in the usual sense of the word. Perhaps it was once intended to be, but it became residential. The oldest building seems to be Cliffbank, dated 1888 - note the lions at the top. Very grand!


Most of the street seems be residental blocks of flats dating from the 1930s and '40s. The brickwork is amazing. It was a difficult choice, but I thought this one took the prize - particularly for its contrast between the quite wonderful central section and its completely tasteless renovated window frames.


I wondered if the people at "Cliffbank" approve of having this parked in the street below.


From High St, I descended to Milson Park to check out the Community Garden that is, according to a thing that came around from the Council, supposed to be under construction. There was this, plus a notice announcing that planting is due to begin in late July! Contact the lady from Cliffbank!!!


Overlooking the park is another row of 1930s brick blocks of flats. Architecturally they are very similar (4 flats in each one), although the decoration of each one is different. I chose this one to photograph, mainly due to the balcony railing.


On the other side of the park there is a row of semi-detached houses. Somebody has added a dragon to their roof!


And, a couple of doors away, another one of the local dogs.


One of the things I love about walking in my neighbourhood is that I always find new things. I stood for ages staring at this place from across the road. It is a hotel. I don't think the shutters are original, but anyway seven shutters are missing from five windows and several others are hanging from one hinge. The curtains, most of which are drawn, are all different colours. There is washing hanging up in one window.


A little further, in Broughton St, the staff at Stir Crazy were having a meal before the rush. I like this place a lot (as do many other people - it is always packed). The people who work there are all Thai (even so, the food is not hot enough and they give you chopsticks!).

20 May
Arrived in Broken Hill about midday. It is much more spectacular than I'd imagined. The road in winds through low, red hills and then suddenly there's a mineworks on your left and around the next bend the town. I had a bit of trouble finding a place to stay - apparently there's some kind of football tournament on. Eventually checked into a motel on the opposite edge of town. They claimed to have wireless internet, but so far I can't stay connected for more than about 10 seconds. At the reception they told me with a shrug that "it's the weather."

Went to have lunch on top of the slag heap (or mullock heap, which is what they call it here). The restaurant, called Broken Earth, is quite good.

At the bottom of the mullock mountain is what's left of the original mine office of BHP. Recently merged with the UK-based Billiton company, it is now the largest mining company in the world. But it started with this modest chimney at Broken Hill, mining silver, lead and zinc in the 1880s.


BHP left BH long ago, but the mines are still going and the mullock mountain is higher than the surrounding hills. The mullock is on top of the Line of Lode which runs for several km right through the middle of the city.
Views from the restaurant.

Looking along Sulphide St, or possibly Bromide, Chloride or Iodide St. I'm not sure - BH is full of toxic sounding streets.



Grass struggling to take hold on top of the slag mountain. Even here the colours are amazing.


Looking along the mullock heap towards one of the still-operating mines.


The defunct Delprats Mine. Somewhere nearby is a memorial (I didn't find it) to a group of mullockers who got buried in their own mullock. Delprat was an early director of BHP (though later than the original group of 7 stockmen who took outthe lease). The founder was a stockman called Charles Rasp (real name - I kid you not - Hieronymus Salvator Lopez von Pereira. He was of Portuguese descent, born in Stuttgart).


The Miners' Memorial, also on the mullock heap. It was closed due to the weather, so this was as close as I could get. Names of miners who died on the job are listed inside.


Public art on the mullock heap.


Some old mine works half way up the mullock heap.


From the top of the slag mountain, I guessed that the most ornate building I could see would turn out to be the Trades Hall and I was right.

The Barrier Industrial Council used to be very strong and their building is correspondingly grand. One of the mosr famous BH personalities was Tom Mann. During the famed lock-out of 1909, Mann was allowed to stay out of gaol on condition that he did not make any speeches in the state of New South Wales. So he went down the road to Cockburn (just over the border in SA) and literally thousands of miners crammed on to the trains to go and hear him.

Down at street level the slag mountain dominates the town.




The motel info gave me a choice of Pizza Hut or Pizza Runner. I chose the latter because they advertised spice, but it has turned into Dominos. I'd never had a Dominos pizza before and it was faintly disgusting. The crust was not made of pizza dough, there was hardly any cheese, the topping was overcooked and the alleged pepperoni had no chilli at all!

8 days ago I was in Brisbane. It's a measure of how hectic my life is at the moment that I couldn't get around to posting these earlier!

The view from my hotel room at night.


The view at 8.30 the next morning. It has been so overcast in Sydney lately that I was really impressed by the brightness of the light. I wish I'd had a bit more time to turn my face to the sun.


Queen St Mall.


Horrendous things are done to old buildings.


On my way to a meeting in the tallest building.


I presume the little Victorian building is the Town Hall or the Post Office.

As I mentioned yesterday, there is quite a lot of kitsch architecture in Kirribilli. I am really not sure about this row of terraces, probably dating from somewhere 1900-1920ish. The spears are crazy - but they're on the governor general's gatehouse too (see yesterday). From what are they defending the bricks and tiles below? What would be falling from the sky in the first two decades of the 20th century? I keep thinking (I know not why) of falling masses of whale blubber. Otherwise the houses are not bad at all.


This place is called Rodong Hall. Funny name, but I think it's very stylish and the bus stop is handy.


This place is a 70-room hotel. I can find nothing about the grinning sculpture of the (presumably) highland laddie. Maybe I should go and ask them to tell me about it.


This grand mansion is right across the road from the PM's. The owners must, at some stage, have fallen on hard times - or maybe they were just greedy - because their water view is now completely blocked by the structure in the following photo.


I could really stand to live in one of these. (Plenty of room for the maid, etc, below stairs! plus fantastic water views).


You can't see it from this angle, but he's looking at his computer and you can see that she's in the kitchen. How tedious.


The architecture is a bit of a melange (I haven't even started on the Cream Bricks of Kirribilli). High density, to be sure, so more people have a chance to look at the water. The places are not all hugely expensive. There are a lot of studios and one bedroom places - I know a couple of young, single guys who are by no means wealthy, but can afford to live around the corner from the PM and the GG.


In the next installment I turn my face to the sea (just before it rains cats and dogs and I'm forced to retreat into the newly opened and very delightful bookshop).

Via Roma. Late afternoon.


An arcade.


In the Via Po.


The fabulous Mole. It is an 1860s building, originally begun as a synagogue for the capital of Italy. But the capital was moved away and the cost of this huge building was too much for the Jewish community to bear. In recent times it has become the National Museum of Cinema - one of the best museums I've ever been in. Under the dome there are reclining chairs from which you can watch a series of film clips on big screens - or become mesmerized by the glass-walled lift going up and down through the centre of the dome to the viewing platform just under the spire. In some side rooms there are exhibits on the history of moving images and various cinematic genres (in one room you get to sit on a toilet while watching that scene from Bunuel's The Phantom of Liberty).


Chestnut roaster near the Faculty of Humanities.

Piazza di Castello - looking south towards the main railway station. God knows what kind of planning allowed the block of apartments to go up in such a precinct. It is hideous. The building on the left is a facade - there's a medieval castle behind it! I'm standing in front of the palace which is elegant baroque.


Bit of medieval castle.


On my right in the previous photo is the church of San Lorenzo, the home of the famous shroud. It is not on show, but you can look at full scale photos of what you've probably seen 50 times before and get a lecture from a volunteer guide. The guide was very interesting - not a religious person at all. The shroud was the prize of war - brought here by the Savoy king from France where it had previously resided. I didn't follow the story all that well, but the guide was very strong on what he described as the "secular role of the church" in Turin.

When you first enter the church you are in the oldest part. There is a sign saying you can only go up the steps on your knees, as the guy in the photo is doing. My camera has really captured the lighting extremely well. It was golden.


A bit of the ceiling.


Passing through this old bit, you enter a spectacular octagonal building with a stunning dome built in the 17th century. Its designer, Guarini, was, according to our guide, a mathematician and scientist - not really religious - hence the unconventional shape of the church. Guarini wanted light entering from above rather than from the side. Back then, however, I don't think there was such a contradiction between mathematics and religion. Newton, after all, thought he was finding god the mathematician.


Part of the dome's exterior. The windows at the bottom are not part of the church. According to the guide, Guarini's design influenced German church architecture.


When my friend told him I was from Australia he said "I've never been there, but I lived in Tonga for a year." I guess for him they're both roughly in the same direction.

Another nearby church. I forget the name, but lettering engraved over the front door announces the daily availability of indulgences.


Our guide at San Lorenzo had alerted us to the fact that Erasmus had studied for his doctorate in Turin and directed us to this place.


We weren't sure, but a woman in the street who seemed to know the place told us that this apartment block was in fact the university where Erasmus worked. We were impressed.


Yet more to come.

The flight into Turin was wonderful. I went mad taking pictures out of the window (please remember that I'm from Sydney and I've seen this quantity of snow about twice in my entire life - and the last time was 25 years ago!). The transformation of the landscape was fascinating.






We flew right over the top of the city. In the lower part of this picture is the original Fiat factory at Lingotto. The inputs went in on the ground floor and the finished car came out at the top where they built a test track. Nowadays the factory is closed and there's an art gallery within. We really wanted to visit it, but didn't have time.


The tall dome and spire is La Mole - a 19th century construction that is easily the tallest building in the city. More on this later.

It has taken basically all week to set up some meetings. Today I met the head of the ILO Better Factories program here and realised just how difficult this project is going to be! He suggested some other people I should see, but I'm leaving tomorrow night and it won't be possible. I might be able to squeeze somebody in tomorrow afternoon IF they're free (big if). Basically the problem is that, precisely because of the Better Factories program, the Cambodian garment factories are heavily studied and the managers are heartily sick of it. Also he said a lot of them are old style managers, possibly very low level within their organisation (which is most likely based in Hong Kong or Taiwan) and regional issues or the development of the industry as a whole in Cambodia are not topics they're interested in. Also many of them only speak Chinese! Even the HR manager often doesn't speak Khmer which is pretty interesting considering that all the people they employ are Khmer speakers.

I'm meeting with the Garment Manufacturers' Association in the morning, but the ILO guy wasn't encouraging. He said that all exporting firms are required to belong (otherwise no export licence), so they join but they don't relate to the organisation at all - or rather only about 30% of them do. So if they help us get in touch with factories our sample is going to have a radical bias. We will need to give the managers some incentive to talk to us, but what can we afford? The answer is SFA.

I walked home because it was only 3 blocks away. We are on the intersection of streets 51 and 302 and the BF office is in street 322. I took Tim's driver on the way there because I figured it was 10 blocks and I didn't want to arrive hot and sweaty, but the numbering goes 302, 308, 310, 322, 334 (I know this because we went one block too far - then we drove back up Norodom Boulevard on the wrong side of the road!). The city is not exactly a grid pattern, but the numbers are on a grid, so all the in-between numbers obviously don't come this far. It's confusing. The next street across from 51 is 57.

I was walking home opposite the apartment block that has the garden on the footpath (Day 4). I hadn't looked up before, but couldn't resist photographing this piece of modern Khmer architecture. It's a sort of temple to money. (It's also the one with all the fancy thingummies on top from Day 1)



So far, I've been moving in quite a small area (apart from the trip to Metro last Friday). Even the Russian restaurant we went to on Monday night was in this area. This is so absolutely the expat zone - I walked a different way around to the Khmer Kitchen at lunchtime and passed the offices of MSF, among others - next door to Cambodge Soir (a newspaper), so a little French enclave. Tomorrow I go slightly further afield to see GMAC.If I have time before leaving, I'll get Borin to take me out past the airport to look at the factories (should've done it earlier in the week, but I was hanging by the phone).

The Khmer Kitchen today was really quite full of Khmers. It's an indicator that PP is developing a middle class, though outside the city it's another story altogether. At the next table from me was a white-haired European/American with 3 Khmer women. He was advising one of them on how to deal with another man in the office: said she was trying to get on with this guy, but she was letting him get the better of her and he was putting the blame for his mistakes on to her. Given that this is generally a really sexist country, I am quite impressed by the number of professional women working in the aid/NGO sector. I've seen women driving cars too - which is still quite rare in Hanoi. But the ratio of cars to motorbikes is also much higher here because it's relatively easy to buy a used car from Thailand. I noticed that Tola has an old white bomb with the steering wheel on the wrong side. The Vietnamese, on the other hand, are incredibly strict about car imports. You can't even drive a right-hand-drive car through as a tourist. A few years ago one of my colleagues drove his 1968 Mini back to England and, while he wanted to go through Vietnam, he couldn't. But he had no problem in China or Russia.

The area I'm in is pretty posh by Cambodian standards and full of mansions like this one.



There are several new apartment blocks as well - mostly looking pretty tasteless to my eye. But they're also hot since they're all closed in by glass, so the aircon bills must be expensive.


They're crowding out the older housing. Indeed Tim has to move out at the end of the year to make way for one of these high rises.


At the Khmer Kitchen, where I have lunch pretty much every day. It's just around the corner from Tim's office, the food is very good and I normally spend $7.50 for a main course and two glasses of lime soda. Today I had lok lak (in Vietnamese luc lac) - stir fried marinaded beef with onions, green tomatoes and a very hot (black) pepper, salt and lime juice dipping sauce. I've also tried their fried rice basil (with chicken) which is served with a hot chilli sauce and lime juice (yum!) and the skewered pork with pickled cucumber. I've noticed that in contrast to my previous visits, there are now a few Khmer eating in the restaurants.


I'm not getting out of this area much. There's a lot to eat and drink in the vicinity and I'm basically in the office all day. I will have a few meetings tomorrow and/or Friday. Then I'm off home again!

An area of 14 ha north and south of Union Street is entirely heritage listed. The area where I walked yesterday was on the south side. This means that if you buy one of the houses you cannot do anything to it that isn't first approved by the North Sydney Council - including the paint you put on the interior walls and planter pots in the garden! Here's part of the description in townplanningese:

The land on the south of Union Street was that part of the William Blue grant inherited by his daughter, Susannah. It was subdivided c 1859 by her husband William Chuter.... The area saw significant upheaval caused by the construction of the railway, first in the 1890s, then again in the 1930s. Despite this, much of the area retains its nineteenth century buildings and streetscape form.

The dominant architectural character is the 19th and early twentieth century worker/seafarer`s cottage, varying from attached, semi-detached and detached housing, one and two storeys high, on small allotments. Interspersed amongst these are pockets of larger, early twentieth century middle class housing, inter-war three storey walk-up flats and infill housing from the post war to late twentieth century periods. Stylistically, the architecture is varied and includes Victorian Georgian, Victorian Regency, Victorian Filigree, Victorian Italianate, Federation Queen Anne and Federation Arts and Crafts, much of which is interpreted in a simplified, working class manner.

The best views were of course snapped up by the big houses, but the area is steep and cliffy, so even some of the tiny cottages (2 rooms max) have great views from the back.

This is one of the smallest cottages. It cannot be more than 2-3 rooms and the block is so tiny that they can't extend out the back as others have done.


Looks like a so-called California bungalow, circa 1920s, with a nasty later glazing-in of the front verandah.


Also inter-war, the entrance to a block of flats.


Part of the "larger,early twentieth century middle class housing".


"Infill". I like this house a lot. Somebody needs to give me about $3 million! I would kill the petunias on the roof terrace though.


More "infill". I don't like this one at all. It's for sale, but I haven't been able to find it on the web. I'd estimate at least $4 million judging by the prices of other places in the area (with harbour views and a pool). The sign out front says the architect designed the furnishings as well.


Yet more infill. This time, by going around the side, I could get up to the level of the views from the previous 3 houses. That's what they pay for.

This building is under renovation. According to the sign one of the things they're going to do is restore the windows, including the bricked up parts.


"DDI Adworks Filmworks" (formerly Sikman & Coates, who, I discovered via Google, were furniture makers).


Drab.


Side view of what is now the local branch office of Leo Burnett (huge Chicago-based advertising agency).

The first three are all from one tiny dead-end lane with about a dozen houses.

I think the window above the doorway is original. Not so sure about the door. This cottage and the one opposite it both have round tops of the door glass and windows on either side.


The same house that has the buddha in the backyard.


20th century jammed in between two 19th century buildings.


If I owned this window, I wouldn't have installed internal shutters.


Entrance to a small block of flats by the railway line.


This one has harbour views. Note the gadget that opens and closes all the shutters at once.


Typical Victorian doorway.


Thomas St Cafe window. I've heard that the food is good, but it's hardly ever open. A sign says Saturday and Sunday brunch and Wednesdays.


Bizarre windows of an early 20th century mansion.

Iron lace is so characteristic of late 19th century Australian architecture, particularly in Sydney. I'm not especially fond of it; it always seems too busy for my taste, though sometimes it does look nice.


I think one of the reasons there's so much of it in Sydney is that there are more two-storey houses here. In my home town it tends to decorate only the top of the verandah, but with two storeys there is also the balcony railing to decorate.


The Catholic manse.


I always think there should be a Spanish lady looking down from this type of balcony, or a Juliet. On an otherwise blank wall at the end of a terrace.


Way too busy.

The Griffins moved to Sydney after years of battling the federal bureaucracy over the design of Canberra. Castlecrag was obviously intended as a rather bohemian community - certainly the bourgeoisie at the time did not think of living in harmony with the bush, and the first houses were very small. Griffin was interested in Anthroposophy (Rudolf Steiner's split from Theosophy) and there's a Steiner school in Castlecrag. It's why he ended up in India, though it seems that Marion was not so keen. After the Griffins left, however, there was nobody to carry on the work. Later, people just built whatever they wanted and it became a preserve of the rich. The median house price is now $1.7 million (I saw one house with a Bentley AND a Rolls Royce parked in the carport). There was a fight sometime in the 1960s when somebody wanted to build a Harry Seidler house - the antithesis of the original concept - but after they called upon Griffin's widow to give her opinion, it was built anyway. I don't even know why there was a fuss, many of the earlier houses are even more at odds with the Griffins' concept. The original reserves are still there, but I didn't see anyone using them - instead everyone was having private picnics on the deck with the view over the harbour. Even if some of the reserves have clearly had some effort put in to upkeep, like the one I posted yesterday, or the one below, which had well maintained pathways, there are others that are just full of weeds. Moreover, most people have put up fences and walls separating their private space from the rest of the community. One or two of the residents of Griffin houses have kept up the bush concept, but mostly they have ordinary (if lush) suburban gardens. In other words, Sydney's materialist culture has prevailed.

( The rest of the Griffin houses in Castlecrag )

It's hard to say whether the origins of this suburb have made any difference at all to its current development. The council website claims that some sense of community survives - mainly in a local theatre group that performs in the open air theatre Griffin designed and in the volunteer groups that work on some of the bush reserves. The houses are now all heritage listed, but that just means they will remain as islands telling a story of a long ago attempt to create something different.

More details at the Castlecrag timeline.

Castlecrag is a very special part of Sydney, having been designed by Walter Burley Griffin. Griffin was a Chicago native, a Prairie School architect who admired Sullivan and had worked with Frank Lloyd Wright (as had his wife and architectural partner Marion Mahoney Griffin).

In 1919 the Griffins founded the Greater Sydney Development Association (GSDA), and in 1921 purchased 259 ha of land in North Sydney. The GSDA's goal was the development of an idyllic community with a consistent architectural feel and bushland setting. Walter Burley Griffin as managing director of the GSDA designed all the buildings built in the area until 1935.... Castlecrag was the first suburb to be developed by the GSDA. Almost all the houses Griffin designed in Castlecrag were small and had flat roofs, and he included an internal courtyard in many of them. Griffin used what was at that time the novel concept of including native bushland in these designs. (Wikipedia)

As with his design for Canberra, Griffin's design for Castlecrag has undergone major modifications which I'm sure he would not have liked, but parts of the design are still there, including especially the layout of the streets. These follow the contours of the hillside and all, except the main road have names taken from castle architecture. Griffin's idea was to have houses that blended with the bush and were scattered through a bushland setting, and he designed a series of natural reserves between the rows of houses - a public area for all the inhabitants of a block. The reserves are still there. Although it's still a very leafy suburb, only a few of the newer houses have followed Griffin's concept of blending with the bush and lots of foreign plants have made inroads. He also designed an amphitheatre in one of the valleys which is still apparently used from time to time for performances and a shopping centre which today is hardly recognisable as a Griffin building. Apparently a Griffin innovation was also the inclusion of a carport in the design.

Altogether only 15 Griffin-designed houses were built and another 45 or so were designed but never built. Griffin went to India in 1935 and died there. His wife went back to Chicago. My brother and I went searching for the houses a couple of weeks ago. Later he sent me a map of where they all are and today I walked around and photographed every single one of them. This wasn't always an easy task, since many of them are so hidden by foliage that I could only get a tiny glimpse of a window frame or a door. Sometimes, all you can see from the street is the carport!

There's a rather nice bust of Griffin in front of the shopping centre.


The first house built, at 136 Edinburgh Road. It was sold this year. I couldn't find out how much it went for, but the real estate agent still has some internal photos up. Here's a photo of the living room. The whole house is only 116 square metres.

( More Griffin houses - not all of them though )

Part 2 follows.

Around every corner in Naples there is something worth looking at. Walking along city streets you tend to keep your eyes on the street - there are loads of uneven cobblestones to trip over, obstacles to negotiate and people to bump into. The trick is to keep your eyes roving between those and the surroundings. Then you will see truly amazing stuff. Neapolitans don't worry about creating parks for historical monuments (the city would be one huge archaeological park!). They just build on top and all around like this:


and this (the bottom part is one of the old city gates, subsequently added to and then it looks as if somebody extended their apartment over the top):


An old church, gradually being buried:


This little old building, tucked away in the corner of a tiny piazza (which also has the bell tower in the first photo) is the graduation hall of the University of Naples 'L'Orientale'.


The entrance to some building. Every brick, at least above the entrance level, is decorated with a fleur de lys.


This piece of shabby chic was on my path to the conference building. It's near the port and surrounded by pretty ugly new buildings. It has weeds sprouting all over and the clock is stuck at 8.48.


Where there is an open space they had to fill it with something! The strange wall on the left is the facade of the main Jesuit church, the interior of which is quite amazing in its decoration. I posted a couple of photos of the interior here (from my 2005 trip).


The buildings on the right are the church of Santa Chiara (wife/girlfriend of St Francis). You could not find a greater contrast between two churchs. Gesu Nuovo is incredibly cluttered and overwhelming; Santa Chiara is vast, cavernous and sparsely decorated. The nave is lined with alcoves, only a few of which have anything in them. Like this tomb with falconers:

Possibly this lack of decoration is because Santa Chiara is also a convent? It is most famous for its cloister garden which, on both occasions I've been in Naples, was closed.