Via Alba is a charming pedestrian street lined with bookstores and music shops, leading right to Port’Alba, one of Naples’ historic city gates. Built in 1625 during the rule of Spanish Viceroy Antonio Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba, the gate was designed to ease travel for locals. Look up and you’ll spot the coats of arms of King Philip III, the city, and the viceroy himself, topped by a statue of Saint Gaetano added after the 1656 plague. But what really makes Port’Alba memorable is the dark legend tied to it. Naples is full of stories about witches. Where to start? First, you have the witch of Vesuvius, who would let out blood-curdling screams on the volcano's slopes. Then there's Janara, a daughter of Satan made sterile, now roaming the night searching for children. As for Porta Alba, it was the setting for a sinister story, that of the "Witch of Porta Alba." But the truth is, she was only a witch in name. She was a stunning redhead, beloved by all but devoted to her fiancé Michel. Shortly after they were married, on a terrible, stormy night, a bolt of lightning struck, turning Michel to stone. Heartbroken, Maria withdrew from the world, her sorrow aging her beyond her years. Her long red hair turned white and her ivory skin became wrinkled. That was all it took for people to brand her a witch. In a time ruled by the Inquisition, merely suspecting a woman of witchcraft was a direct path to the gallows. She was imprisoned in a cage beneath the gate, left to die slowly in full view of the neighborhood. On her deathbed, she cursed the city, warning that generations to come would pay for what happened to her. Her body supposedly turned to stone, a curse so feared that the Inquisition dismantled her cage, leaving only a hole where the hook once hung. Locals say you can still hear Maria’s anguished cries on quiet nights, drifting through that small opening.