Piazza Dante

This guide to Piazza Dante in Naples starts underground, with the granary Naples carved into the volcanic rock around 1600 to guard the wheat that could decide whether the city survived a siege or a bad harvest. Even after the architect Luigi Vanvitelli reshaped the square above it for the Bourbon king Charles the Third, lining the curved wings with twenty six carved virtues, the grain kept working beneath the pageantry. Look for the empty niche at the center, built for an equestrian statue of Charles that was never installed. It sat empty even as vendors filled the market square above, year after year.