Barra (Naples)

Barra is an eastern suburb of Naples, southern Italy with a population of some 40,000 inhabitants. It is on the sea, and moving east out of the city, it is the suburb directly after Poggioreale. The area has suffered much the same fate of urban decay as the rest of the eastern periphery of Naples, a fate that includes drugs and entrenched organized crime. Historically, it was one of the Vesuvian areas built up under the Bourbons in the 1700s and still displays some structures from that period that have been restored and incorporated into the tourist/cultural itinerary of "Vesuvian Villas". The area was heavily bombed in WWII.