September 11
Naples is famous for making the nativity figures to populate your Christmas crèche. There is a whole street in the Centro Storico; “Via San Gregorio Armeno”, filled with shops specializing in these figures. The craftspeople seem to have branched out these days offering figurines and miniatures representing all kinds of occupations: a table of game players, a dentist, a teacher, a pizzeria complete with chef and glowing oven, the wine seller, the lotto ticket sales person. Some even have moving parts. They are quite enchanting.
We continue to explore the Centro Storico and wander those streets every now and then entering one of the over the top churches and being dazzled by the art that covers them. The other day we went underground; underneath the old city is the Greek constructed aqueduct that were in use in the city until the cholera epidemic of 1884. We also saw a theatre that was unearthed right under someone’s current apartment, discovered by an intrepid archeologist who noticed the curvy shape of the rooftops. This extensive underground city was a bomb shelter during WW2 and 3000 people were sheltered there while Naples was extensively shelled.
It was so cool and calm underground that on Sunday we continued our underground adventures by zipping around to a number of stations on the metro line when it was pretty much deserted. The stations that used to be closest to the water, near our house “Toledo”, Piazza Galibaldi, (the train station) and the Piazza Municipio amongst others are closed for what seems to be extensive renovations. This major construction project makes those parts of the city pretty much impassable and I keep thinking that in ten years Naples will look so much better, But you never know. Many of the existing stations serve as galleries for “Underground Art” a great idea and there were some interesting installations.
We now know some very useful bus routes that help us get around easily leaving the crazy traffic to the driver. Yesterday, out the bus window, we saw a woman in tears who was having a driving lesson and negotiating one of the busy roundabout piazzas surrounded by scooters and buses and pedestrians and other cars. TERRIFYING.
Since we don’t have Internet access at home we bought some pirated DVDs from a street vendor on Via Toledo. This ended in disappointment since Italians dub everything and hate subtitles so we were unable to enjoy either the foreign films (we thought that English subtitles might be a choice) or the American films (dubbed in Italian). I guess that is just what we deserve for violating the copyright laws. There is a very large community of African men who make up the vast majority of the street vendors. Along with the music and DVDs they hawk sunglasses and endless designer fakes Chanel perfumes, Rolex watches and Louis Vuitton and Guicci bags. One day on Via Toledo, the busy, kind of pedestrian only mall we witnessed the sudden and rapid dismantling and disappearance of the street vendors due to an approaching police cruiser. The very creative cardboard, display stands are flattened, goods still in place and the white sheets filled with bags on the ground become bundles and of they go up the side streets.
You just can’t come to Naples without visiting Pompeii, but it is so hot and Suzo said it was in ruins, so taking the advise of a Cambridge professor we met who called it the “rear window” version we opted for Herculaneum. It was much smaller than Pompeii but on the day of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, the prevailing wind was toward the SW, so Pompeii was pelted with falling pumice stone, Herculaneum was blanketed by thick pyroclastic matter to a depth of five metes. Most of Herculaneum is under the modern town of Ercolano, but the site (Scavi di Ercolano) is beautiful and manageable indeed more like a dollhouse that you can look at from above and then walk down into. Columns and houses and red paint and murals and the earthquake proof walls and generally beautiful constructions with marble and even super charred wooden pillars. There was a whole street of ye olde restaurants, even then people liked to eat out and a wine store. We took the train home again to Naples. Arriving outside the train station in Piazza Garibaldi made me so happy that our entrance to Naples had been from the Airport. Entering Piazza Garibaldi is like arriving at the scene of a disaster, but people are acting like it is just normal. This is where it is hard to cross the street. But as Yvonne says just look for women driving smart cars and they will stop for you. We also visited the massive building housing the museum of Archeology where the statuary is extremely impressive and some of it huge. Sure beats the statues at the Calabria. I particularly enjoyed the dogs.
Yesterday we had a beautiful afternoon touring the Bay of Naples on the coast sightseeing boat. We were two of six passengers. The clouds were spectacular which made Vesuvius and Naples and the distant islands look stunning. We were given headphones that played Neapolitan Song punctuated by useful information about what we were sailing by. We passed extraordinary villas and ruins of extraordinary villas and went all the way to Baia, birthplace of leisure. As someone said in the early 1900’s “It is easy to love Naples from the sea”.
I have been reading an excellent book “In the Shadow of Vesuvius’ which is a quick Cultural History of Naples. Starting with the first known eruption of Vesuvius AD 79 and going from there the city has endured many tragic and violent occurrences: plagues and epidemics and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions; cholera and the camorra and racketeering and corruption wars and fascism. It is no wonder that they need the powerful protector San Genaro and that the poet Virgil’s best-known quote: “carpe diem”, or “seize the day” is the unofficial motto of the Neapolitans. The quote continues: “ trusting as little as possible in the future”.
What have read or are reading:
Short Walks in Shangri-La, Peter Francis Browne
A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon
Monkey Hunting, Christian Garcia
Passion on the Vine, Sergio Esposito
The Foreign Correspondant, Alan Furst
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