Leaving Capodichino airport, our taxi driver nearly ran another car off the road. He shouted something after the driver, flipped him the finger, and then proceeded to drive wildly onto the autostrade. I turned to John and smiled. “Benvenuto a Napoli. We’re definitely in Naples now.”
One guidebook I read described this city as “Italy on steroids.” Many tourists tend to avoid the city altogether, and when we found ourselves in Naples for the first time thirty years ago, we were so struck by the crowds, the filth, and the poverty that we could not get out of it fast enough. But I knew that this was once one of the great capitals of Europe and that there were magnificent churches and museums here. So when John suggested that we return to Italy this summer I told him that I definitely wanted to spend some time in Naples. And so here we find ourselves on the western slope of Mount Vesuvius at the edge of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Naples is an old city, but its name comes from two Greek words, Nea Polis or “New City.” In the last decades of the Bronze Age the Greeks aggressively established colonies in what is today southern Italy and Sicily. Their initial settlement in this area was called Parthenope, named after the Siren who supposedly drowned herself in the sea after she failed to seduce Ulysses. Etruscans from central Italy later struggled with the Greeks for control of this area, and this apparently led to establishing Nea Polis sometime in the sixth century BCE as a more defensible city.
Obviously there is a lot of history that took place between that time and now, and now Naples does not seem like an New City at all! There were invasions and conquests by the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Visigoths, the Saracens, the Normans, the Spanish…. The list goes on and on. But more on any of this when and if it comes up.
We are staying at a place called the Decumani Hotel de Charme. All the guidebooks seem to like it, and the location cannot be beat. It’s in some old palazzo that they are slowly restoring, and some of the public rooms are great. This is the breakfast room.
Our room, however, is nothing particular to crow about. It’s somewhat spartan and not particularly large. The only windows are two doors facing a rather ugly interior court yard.
I went out to look at it while John snapped this artsy shot.
So, not being inclined to spend too much time in it, John and I went exploring. Now John often as we are wandering about European cities complains about visiting so many churches, but in Naples that is where so much of the art is that even he was interested in checking out almost every one. We stopped first at Sant’Angelo a Nilo, the site of a famous funerary monument, but the most interesting parts of the church were closed. So we went on to San Domenico Maggiore.
This church, named for Saint Dominic, was the first site of the University of Naples, and after leaving Paris, Thomas Aquinas returned to southern Italy to teach theology here. And it was in a chapel in this church towards the end of his life that he had a famous vision. We were in that chapel, but so were several friars and a couple visiting nuns so we could not get away with taking any pictures. The nave of the church was fairly empty, so we brazenly ignored all the signs showing a large red X over a drawing of a camera. This is the high altar and the choir behind it. The church was originally built in a simple Norman Gothic style as you can see from the vaulted ceiling. But Baroque artists did their best to decorate it in their new, exuberant style as you can see.
The ceiling of the nave is features a suspended Renaissance wooden to hide the vaulting there. We found the front facing camera on the phone just perfect for taking these kinds of pictures.
One of the most interesting things in the church was the remains of a “forty hour machine,” a special altar designed for Eucharistic devotion.
We went on from there to San Lorenzo Maggiore, the headquarters of the Franciscan Friars in Naples. This is a pretty stark and uninteresting Gothic structure. The were one or two things worthy of a photograph here, but there were a couple women who were enforcing the photography ban with near military fervor. So, dear reader, you will have to check with Google on that one if you wish.
Grafitti was invented in Italy - or at least the word was - and it is ubiquitous in Naples. It is hard to find any building whose first floor exterior is not covered in spray paint of some kind. For me, and I suspect for most Americans, it is discouraging to see handsome old buildings defaced in this way. But it apparently does not bother the Neapolitans that much.
A great deal of it appears to be political
and some of it is even rather fascinating.
The wonderful thing about Naples is how life seems to be lived out on the streets. All the streets in the historic center are quite narrow, and most are not much larger than alleys. The maze of dark interior streets seems more like a North African souk than anything in Rome or Turin. But a chance look will bring a surprising glimpse of an old church
or of some African sisters of Mother Theresa’s order.
The obsession that northern Italians seem to have with dressing up and looking fashionable — “fare una bella figura — seems rather absent here. Neapolitans present themselves to the world as they are.
There is also laundry drying everywhere. Everybody in Naples knows what your sheets are like, and apparently the more colorful they are the better!
There are many odd little monuments to be found on the streets such as this tribute to Punchinella, the commedia dell'arte character who is also stock figure in Neapolitan puppetry.
John loves commedia dell’arte!
As in other Roman Catholic countries, street shrines are fairly common.
What I found somewhat unusual in Naples was the addition of neon.
Everywhere there are shops and stalls and carts selling things. Only in Bangkok have I ever seen such abundance and variety of street food. We stopped to buy a sfogliatella, the famous Neapolitan pastry whose many thin layers are filled with sweet, almond-flavored ricotta.
Our next stop on the historic church circuit was the basilica of San Paolo Maggiore. Legend has it that both Peter and Paul preached in Naples on their way to martyrdom in Rome. This church was built on the site of a Roman temple to Castor and Pollux and some of the pediment of the old temple was visible there until an earthquake in the eighteenth century toppled it for good. The interior is Baroque, and one of the things about Italy is how quickly these extraordinary interiors soon seem commonplace.
The most important thing for locals at this church is the shrine to Saint Cajetan, the founder of the Theatine order. In Italian he is known as San Gaetano. All the faithful were upstairs at the evening Mass, so I had the opportunity to snap this surreptitious shot.
From there we wandered down Spaccanapoli or “Naples Divider” street. Like all the streets in the historic center it is not wide, but unlike all the others it is remarkably straight. There are all kinds of interesting shops here. John was for some reason taken with this bridal place.
As we drew closer to the Duomo or Cathedral we went down the Via San Gregorio Armeno, famous for its artisans who make a of carving nativity scenes.
The detail in these nativity scenes is amazing!
Our final ecclesiastical destination was the Duomo di Napoli, the cathedral of Naples.
The interior is being renovated, and scaffolding and construction materials were everywhere in the nave. The high altar was clearly influenced by Saint Peter’s in Rome.
The big attraction at the Cathedral is the blood of Saint Janarius, a third-century martyr. Alas, it only is shown to the public twice a year. But when it is displayed to the faithful it supposedly liquifies and if it fails to do so disaster will soon befall Naples. We will have to come back for that one — and perhaps have a plane ticket out for the next day!
We stopped at a small cafe to have a salad. It was not a memorable meal, but sitting on a small piazza allowed us to engage in fascinating people watching. As night fell, we wandered back to our hotel through the maze of streets in the centro storico.
