Via Dei Tribunali

About this audio guide

This guide to Via dei Tribunali in Naples begins at a stenciled Virgin Mary on Piazza dei Girolamini, credited to the street artist Banksy, her halo replaced by a painted revolver and protected behind glass fitted by a local resident named Mariano Russo. It follows her gaze toward an older devotional shrine that has since vanished from the wall she is looking at. You'll hear about the edicole votive, the wall shrines an eighteenth-century friar named Gregorio Maria Rocco convinced the king to bless as street lighting in disguise, meant to deter thieves wary of a painted saint's eye. Walk on and count how many of these small altars still hold fresh flowers and candles today.