Royal Palace of Naples

This guide to the Royal Palace of Naples centers on Ferdinand the Fourth, king of Naples and Sicily, who hosted ambassadors at protocol-heavy banquets inside these halls yet slipped out to the royal box at the theater next door to eat macaroni with his bare fingers, the way the clown Pulcinella did. His queen, Marie Caroline, was so mortified she would march her ladies out mid performance, while the city's poor adored him for it and nicknamed him their own Lazzarone King. The guide follows what that appetite meant for the formal royal table, where a king determined to eat pasta properly ran into the limits of an ordinary meat fork. Look up afterward at the eight stone kings watching over Piazza del Plebiscito and pick out Ferdinand among them.