“We saw no kitchen or infirmary, both being removed to San Francesco; but in the room which was the infirmary, and which is better than the others, we saw a poor fellow lying down asleep, but he seemed to me very ill, and looked like a dead person.”
Of this celebrated prison the writer of these “memoirs” is enabled, from personal observation and knowledge, to give some account.
The Vicaria, or Castel Capuano, was originally situated outside, but is now enclosed within the city of Naples. The first building was erected by William, the Norman, for a Royal Palace, and surrounded by fortifications. Here the Kings of Naples successively resided, until Ferdinand of Arragon demolished the fortifications, thereby rendering it useless as a stronghold.
In the year 1540 the Viceroy, Pedro de Toledo, rebuilt it in its present form, and gave it the name of “Vicaria.” The magnificent chambers (stained with many a crime) were converted into Law Courts, the smaller rooms were utilized as dungeons. For 310 years it remained a so-called “Palazzo di Giustizia.” Of the peculiar species of Justice and Law administered it is hardly necessary to speak, except perhaps to call them by their proper names of cruelty, chicanery, and oppression. Nor is it surprising that during these centuries, ecclesiastical and civil tyranny should have had equal sway within the walls of the “Vicaria.”
In 1848 this vast and gloomy edifice, which stands at the end of the Strada dei Tribunali, bore, carved in stone, in bold relief, over its one heavily barred entrance, that badge of Italian servitude, the Austrian double headed eagle. Near the dungeons were stationed Swiss guards. Inside the gate, and arranged around a circular court-yard, were the houses inhabited by the guardians of the courts, and, in addition to these, the residence of the executioner, whose implements, the scaffold and gallows, and all their appurtenances were displayed outside. Three broad staircases led respectively to the Civil and Criminal Courts and to the cells. As regards these, one door afforded access to the prison reserved for nobility, another to that set apart for the lower orders. Over the last was a picture of the Virgin and Child.
With the Vicaria Vecchia had disappeared many a secret chamber and loathsome living tomb, the remains of Spanish barbarity. According to Celano, 4,000 human beings were at one time immured in these dens, but in the building as it now stands there would not be room for more than 1,500.
Many famous productions have cheered the solitude of these sombre walls. In one of these cells Antonio Sella wrote his first essay on political economy; in another Mattia Prete, the famous Calabrese painter, 1613-1699, was a prisoner and condemned to death. Him, however, the Viceroy reprieved in these graceful words: Vita excellens in arte non debet mori.
Even so late as 1859 the present writer has himself seen the eleven wire cages, swinging between the windows of the buildings, each containing human heads.
The horrors of the Vicaria have been fully dwelt upon here and elsewhere; but we may mention that, on the 22nd of November, Panizzi paid a second visit to the prison with the view of more fully examining certain matters which had either been omitted or superficially surveyed during his first inspection. We forbear, however, from entering further into the horrible details connected with the place, which deserved no better appellation than the one given to it by Mr. Gladstone—a very hell upon earth.
In December Panizzi took his departure for England. He was accompanied to the last by his never failing followers, the spies, who had come[come] to do him the final kind office of seeing him on board. Signor Lacaita, who was also present to bid him adieu, took the liberty of asking them what they wanted and whom they were watching? Quel pezzo grosso (that big fellow), replied they, “and to see that he is safely off.”