- Galleria Umberto
Galleria Umberto is a public shopping gallery in
Naples , southernItaly . It is located directly across from the San Carlo opera house. It was built between 1887–1891, and was the cornerstone in the decades-long rebuilding of Naples — called the "risanamento " (lit. "making healthy again") — that lasted untilWorld War I . It was designed byEmanuele Rocco , who employed modern architectural elements reminiscent of theGalleria Vittorio Emanuele II inMilan . The Galleria was named forUmberto I , King of Italy at the time of construction. It was meant to combine businesses, shops, cafes and social life — public space — with private space in the apartments on the third floor.The Galleria is a high and spacious cross-shaped affair surmounted by a glass
dome braced by 16 metal ribs. Of the four glass-vaulted wings, one fronts on via Toledo (via Roma), still the main downtown thoroughfare, and another opens onto the San Carlo Theater. It has returned to being an active center of Neapolitan civic life after years of decay.The Galleria Umberto is the setting for "The Gallery" (1947) by the American writer
John Horne Burns (1916–1953) based on his experiences as an American soldier in Naples shortly after the liberation of the city.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.