na'pl'z, a city in southern Italy, the largest in the kingdom, situated on the northern shore of the beautiful Bay of Naples, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, about 120 mi. s. e. of Rome. It is built partly along the shore, partly on the slope of the hills, and is one of the most picturesque cities of the world. In the modern part of the city there are wide, regular, well-kept streets, but the older portion is comparatively unattractive. Among the chief buildings are the cathedral, begun in the thirteenth century; the churches of San Paolo Maggiore, San Domenico Maggiore, the Annunziata and other churches to the number of four hundred; the royal palace, with its noteworthy paintings; the old palace, and the national museum, which contains a remarkable collection of antiquities from Pompeii and Herculaneum. The city has a university which dates from the thirteenth century and which is attended by about five thousand students. There are also schools of medicine, engineering, music and military affairs, besides numerous hospitals and charitable institutions. The city is well supplied with street railways, which connect it, also, with various towns in the surrounding country. The manufactures of Naples, which are numerous but individually unimportant, include macaroni and vermicelli, silks, cottons and woolens, glass, china, musical instruments, artificial flowers, perfumery, soap, machinery and many other articles. The harbor accommodations are excellent, and the trade is second in importance among Italian cities. Naples is one of the most densely populated cities in Europe. In the environs are situated the tomb of Vergil, the ancient Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii and the remains of Roman temples, villages, palaces and tombs. Naples was founded by a Greek colony from the town of Cumae many centuries B. C. It took the name of Neapolis (New City) to distinguish it from an older Greek city adjoining, called Parthenope. Naples passed to the Romans in the third century B. C. and under them flourished for several centuries. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Ostrogoths held the city for a time, and from them it passed to the Byzantines in the sixth century. In 1130 the Norman Robert Guiscard united the south of Italy and the adjacent island of Sicily into one state, and from that period the history of Naples ceases to be the history of a city and becomes a part of the history of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, of which Naples was recognized as the metropolis (See SICILIES, KINGDOM OF THE TWO). Population in 1901, not including suburbs, 563,540.