Palazzo Donn'Anna

Located at the beginning of Via Posillipo, Palazzo Donn’Anna is one of the most famous buildings in Naples that emerges from the sea in an impressive palace of tuff. Built in the late fifteenth century on an existing building called "La Sirena" owned by Dragonetto Bonifacio, this massive building was renovated by the will of Donna Anna Carafa wife of the viceroy Ramiro Núñez de Guzmán duke of Medina de las Torres. The project was commissioned to the most important architect of the city in that period, Cosimo Fanzago. In 1642 in fact, he readied a design according to the canons of the Neapolitan Baroque that provided, among other things, the construction of a double entry point, one on the sea and one on the carriage road that stretched along the coast of Posillipo and that led to the inner courtyard of the building. In the interior, was eventually constructed a theatre overlooking the Bay of Naples, however, Fanzago failed to complete the work due to the premature death of Donna Anna.

The building left unfinished assumed the spectacular charm of an ancient ruin blurred among the remains of Roman villas that characterize the coast of Posillipo. Later damaged during a popular uprising and later by an earthquake, Palazzo Donn’Anna stands silent and mysterious beside the sea.

However, the fame of Palazzo Donn'Anna is not due exclusively to its imposingness; it is also popular because popular traditions wants it to be, at any cost, scene of many spicy and mysterious events related to its inhabitants and owner. We could start talking about the hottest nights of Queen Giovanna, which, was said, to kill her lovers (a bit like the praying mantis) after sex was over. However, we will focus on the life of its owner Anna Carafa.

Princess of Stigliano, blonde, beautiful and brought to the command, she had been described as "cold and sensual, haughty and bold, cold-eyed and lips shaped to a false and ironic smile." Anna inherited all the properties of her grandfather Luigi Antonio because her father and brother Joseph had died prematurely.

Shortly after marrying Prince Ramiro, the ambitious Anna, given its unbridled passion for lavish parties, built Palazzo Donna Anna, mysterious wonder of golden tuff that cost about 150,000 ducats, where all the Spanish and Neapolitan nobility participated in the magnificent feasts held by Donna Anna. As mentioned above, she built a wonderful theatre in which great shows were played. Actors were all nobles, and her niece, Mercede de las Torres, beautiful, young, longhaired and eyed blacks used to take part to these representations. One day Anna noticed a strange connection between her beautiful Spanish niece and her former lover Gaetano Casapesenna thus beginning to have doubts about a possible relationship between the two.

It was a play to dispel every doubt, where Casapesenna played the part of a knight and Mercedes that of a slave in love with her master, who in the story was faithful to the point of sacrificing her own life to save that of her loved. In the final scene, which saw them kiss for the last time, both turned out to be so true to the whole room burst of applause for the great performance; everyone but Donna Anna who was mad with envy and jealousy.

It is said that after that episode, Carafa had to complain several times against her nephew, so much that the quarrels in fighting for the love of Casapesenna became a frequent habit. However, one day, Mercedes disappeared, saying that she, driven by a sudden religious vocation, had closed herself into a convent. The reality, much more raw, was that the beautiful Spanish, after a violent quarrel with her aunt, was killed in a dungeon of the palace under the order of Donna Anna. Casapesenna, for his part, never ceased to look for his beloved Mercedes neither when he breathed his last shot to death a few years later, in battle.

The hardness and sterility of feelings permanently invaded the heart of Donna Anna Carafa, victim of a hate that pushed her more and more into the arms of sorrow and loneliness. Shortly after, her husband was called back in Spain leaving Donna Anna in melancholy; she soon died for a pedicle disease. The palace, which remained unfinished, soon went to ruin.

Sad story of a love triangle and death still intended to leave indelible marks , and if on the one hand the ghost of Donna Anna wandering restlessly through the palace , making feel her icy presence, on the other hand the shadow of the beautiful Mercedes still vague in the basement of the place that once saw her happy. The undaunted Casapesenna runs in the eternal and frantic search of his great love never forgotten.