Italy Souvenirs Naples 2025: What to Actually Buy in the Most Genuine City

How the 18th-century Bourbon royal court turned a folk Christmas tradition into the world's most elaborate miniature art form

The Neapolitan presepe tradition (the Nativity scene — a universal Christian art form) was transformed into the most elaborate and most specifically Neapolitan art tradition in the 18th century by the specific interest of the Bourbon royal court (Charles III of Bourbon, who ruled Naples from 1734 to 1759, was the most enthusiastic presepe collector in Europe — his personal presepe at the Palazzo Reale di Caserta had 6,000 figures). The specific Bourbon innovation: the royal collectors extended the Nativity scene from the traditional three-shepherd-and-angel format to a complete representation of 18th-century Neapolitan street life — the bakers, the butchers, the fishwives, the inn-keepers, the Turkish merchants, and the aristocratic spectators who appear alongside the holy figures are all drawn from the specific social topography of 18th-century Naples. The theological justification: the Dominican and Franciscan theologians of the Neapolitan court argued that the inclusion of contemporary social types in the presepe expressed the universality of the Incarnation (the divine entering every aspect of human life, including the market, the inn, and the street). The art historical consequence: the specific Neapolitan presepe figurine tradition (the terracotta face, the glass eyes, the wire-frame articulated limbs, the fabric clothing sewn by the tailors of the royal workshops) established the most technically demanding folk art tradition in Italian decorative arts, maintained continuously from the 18th century to the present Via San Gregorio Armeno workshops.