Castel dell'Ovo

This guide to Castel dell'Ovo in Naples starts on the twenty-third of June, seventeen ninety-nine, when a white flag went up over this seafront fortress, the last stronghold of a five-month Neapolitan republic inspired by the French Revolution. The republicans inside had struck a surrender deal with Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo, promising safe passage to France for the garrison, and British, Russian and Turkish officers had signed alongside him. Four days later Admiral Horatio Nelson sailed into the bay, read the treaty, and had to decide whether a promise made by other men still bound him. Cross the narrow causeway to the castle and picture the ships waiting just offshore for his answer.