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In undertaking the research for his treatise on palmistry, the Chirophysiognomia (written perhaps between 1599 and 1608), Neapolitan polymath Giovan Battista Della Porta (1535–1617) collected plaster casts and drawings of the hands and feet of executed criminals whose corpses were displayed as signs of terror to foreigners. These corpses were deliberately left to rot at the gallows of the Ponte Riccardo, in an eerie place just off the city limits of Naples. This article contextualises Della Porta’s collecting activities as part of a set of contemporary discourses on place in Naples. It uses two prototypical contemporary maps of Naples by Lafréri and Du Perac (1566) and Baratta (1629), to trace the itineraries of convicts (and their remains) through specific places. In particular, this article discusses the heterotopia of the gallows out of town – its location and architectonic structure, and the fact that this place was not represented on contemporary maps. Indeed, the gallows at this bridge had a long-lasting impact on the imagination of Neapolitans and foreigners (as can be reconstructed not only from Della Porta, but also from two novellas written by Masuccio Salernitano (1471) and Maria de Zayas (1637)). Moreover, this article argues that Della Porta’s method of translating (infamous) corpses into text is related to the ways in which the city of Naples was translated into a text in contemporary guides to the city, for instance by Pietro di Stefano (1560).

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From Piazza Mercato to Ponte Riccardo, and on to Via Toledo: Giovan Battista Della Porta's Transation of Hands and Feet of Executed Criminals across Early Modern Naples