The Ile of Capri

Castell Nuova, near the Naples boat dock

We are off to Capri - in just over an hour from waking - after a brisk walk through the clear, wintry Naples morning, past marble fountains and piles of waking homeless. Now we lurch against the muscular Mediterranean, in a boat cabin like that of an airplane, with morning news shows chatting away from drop down screens. Among rainbows of sea spray Capri looms, its mysterious silhouette blackened by the brilliant sun.

We arrive against the iconic cliff sides topped with green, gulls gliding. But the storefront cafes at the Marina are watchful and grasping, eyes out for tourist money. We take the funicular up into the town, all high end shops scrubbed clean for tourists, like Costa Smeralda in Sardinia. Barely a simple coffee to be had. The original medieval church has been improved upon beyond recognition. American, Japanese and Chinese tour groups drift up past the Carthusian perfume factories. The same monastic order we visited in the lofty Vomero district has, here, developed perfume, sold in shops that feature photos of Jackie Kennedy. The garden Augustinian has plunging views of the thundering sea. It was donated by the Nazi supporter Krupp, who also built the pathways beneath. There is a statue of Lenin, who was Gorky's guest on the island. All you see in this area is hotels, beautifully folded into the rocky heights, including the Krupps hotel.

Pathways by Krupps

Carthusian Monastery

Below is the Carthusian Monastery, medieval with its lumpy, Jerusalem-like roofs. It is now a lycee---we see students doing jumping jacks under the arches of the cloister. We make our way down into the monastery, which preserves only traces of fresco in the chapel, its dusty undecorated halls mostly closed. The overgrown gardens are also closed. The monastery is an empty husk that no one in this wealthy island thought to keep up.

Villa Jovis

So we walk east to the Villa of Tiberius, an uphill hike past neglected Roman-like gardens, some being worked on, villas and vineyards, real people with shopping carts among the tumultuous cypresses, past charming neglect and ostentatious luxury, to the ruin of the Emperor Tiberius' main villa (among his twelve on the island) where he spent the last ten years of his long life (79 years) going mad.

Villa Jovis

Villa Jovis

The stoic soldier and heir to the great Augustus Caesar had ruled as a close-mouthed steward of Rome, living in the city and attending the senate, until he decided to install himself on the beautiful Capri. The two great historians of the era, Tacitus and Suetonius, dispute whether the seeds of his madness were evident earlier in his imperial reign. Tacitus goes to great length to show Tiberius as a vicious, vengeful ruler from the start, who kept secret lists of his enemies and indulged extensively in judicial murders. Both agree that the last ten years of his life were pure terror for the Romans, the bodies piling up, informants dredging up crimes at a frenzied pace. For example, one woman was executed for mourning her son. Previous friends of executed Romans were cut down en masse. Cabals and conspiracies were so out of control that many respectable and innocent Romans simply committed suicide, often by starving themselves, to avoid the inevitable. This was orchestrated from Capri, where Tiberius lived a life of continual orgies, mainly with children procured especially for their looks. He invited many astrologers to the island, where they were led, blindfolded, up secret muddy paths. If he found them insufficient, which was true of all but one, they were thrown off the cliffs on the way down.

The informational placards of the actual Villa Jovis gloss over the wanton reputation of the Villa, and instead point out an imposing layout of which today only partially resurrected multi-colored brick remains. The picturesque walls shear away to the treetops and sky, with the silent Mediterranean far below.

Near the Blue Grotto

From there we take a hidden trail that dropped and rose muddily and stonily--said to be the original entrance to the villa, now a protected sentier among unique fauna and flora overlooking deep coves in the sea. To the northeast is the Villa of Lysis, an early 20th c neo-Grecian temple of Capri high society--"refined, subtle, negative, subversive, pagan" wrote Roger Peyrefitte. Through the forest still, but now on paved pathways between villa walls, we hike back to the town of Capri, and take the little orange bus to the other town, Anacapri. As the little bus swerves over steep cliffs the locals cross themselves, the bus driver miraculously avoiding the well-fed local evidently stray dogs, and getting us to the historical center of Anacapri.

Anacapri features some historical sites which are all closed, including the bizarre Casa Rossa, a Moroccan style kasbah with garish Native American decor, which nonetheless houses valuable art. It was built by an American Confederate colonel who comforted himself after the Civil War defeat with his Caprican wife. Restaurants and shops are closed. But Santa Sofia, an originally Byzantine church, is open, next to a restaurant that agrees to prepare two salads for us, the only customers of the day. Another bus takes us to the famous Blue Grotto, closed because of rough seas, say the fishermen who were using beautiful little wide-eyed red fish for bait. An affectionate mutt bursting with life comes up for a caress then takes off after a man on a motorino--his master? His friend? We wait for the return bus just above the sea, walking on wave-washed rocks in the dying afternoon sun, Sorrento and Naples hazy pink. On the return bus, a tall horse-toothed man with a glittering smile hails the bus--we both immediately identify him as a priest, unctuous and aggressively friendly to the ladies in the bus.

Caesar Augustus

In Anacapri a rough stone stairway, La Scala Fenicia, descends straight down the vertical cliff to the Marina, in switchbacks. It was the only pathway from Greek times to the late 19th c. It plunges over vegetable crops, through a forest and beneath the very turns in the highway where bus passengers had crossed themselves, till figures playing soccer in the stadium by the sea become visible, and the entry ways of villas and simpler houses light the stone vicoletto. The way leads right down to the Marina. A cold hour later we are on the boat back to Napoli.

Snapshots of Naples

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The past in Naples seems more vivid than the present. But what is the present like? In spite of chaotic crowded streets, the air is soft. Our apartment faced a beautifully finished Empire building on a street of international shops, but the entrance was on a dark, sinister warren of passageways. Every wall that is not a monumental Baroque church built on top of Greek and Roman ruins is a pitted monstrosity of grafitti and forgotten posters. Garbage piles high next to immaculately restored monasteries.

Piazza Dante, across the street from our apartment

During our stay, the rain covered the heavy flagstones with dark water that the children of our home exchange family loved to jump in, while motorcycles inched through every opening, fanning us with spray. We were exchanging with a wonderful young family, gracious even while their five-year old was recovering from cranial surgery. It was her old family apartment that they had renovated, with lofts, to create rental property for tourists visiting Naples.

Creche figure

The nearby market, as in Palermo, is folded among forgotten derelict palazzos, fresh fruits and vegetables and gleaming wide-eyed fish for a pittance. Inside the bright enormous churches at evening time Neapolitans sing round harmonies. The great gothic church (San Lorenzo Maggiore) built by Charles I of Anjou over the Greek and Roman temples to Diana has a flat wooden ceiling, dark and simple, while beneath our feet were exotic marble inlays.

On that first rainy night we walked through the centro historico toward the creche market (it was the season of Precepe, the creche displays that Neapolitans have raised to a national art). We were waylaid by a modern day Pulcinello troupe--free (Saturday and Sunday, 6pm)! With vivid mime makeup and broad gestures, an actor in a top hat enticed us into a beautifully painted barrel vaulted church (Sant Angelo a Segno), covered over with a clothesline, filled with bouncing Neapolitan beauties. A super charged actor delivered an hour straight of physical comedy, shtick and broad satire of, for example, French and German accents, that led into a song filled mime of Pulcinello's life and death, filled with much interaction with the audience, in particular with Jacques & me. He asked me where I was from--New York--and the church filled with Sinatra's old song. He got me to beat the tambourine and then both of us to dance, maneuvered by the strong arms of the bouncing beauties. O Sole Mio came back again and again with all kinds of words. And he fully welcomed us to Naples.

Creche display, Carthusian monastery

Then we continued along. We walked among the creches, with their settings and tiny pieces of Neapolitan life for sale. Big burly men sat in their workshops, their rough faces and corpulent bodies doing the delicate work for the creche market. It wound around innumerable grand baroque churches, lit with Christmas neon, creating a Carravagiesque setting under the black niches of the ponderous architecture. As alluring as Venice but as decaying as Palermo, the haunted stone streets and half-gutted buildings promised fascinating stories. Behind the market stalls of hundreds--thousands-- of tiny elf worlds, carved owls, tiny elf food and mandolins. The height of the season began December 8. Those evenings you can get crushed in the crowds of Spaccanapoli the east/west axis through the old city. It is more crowded than Beijing during the national holiday. We were immobilized in a veritable jam of winter coats, among kind people who apologized to each other.

Via Tribunali, once a Roman road

Every so often we would enter a mighty church where worshipper sang in broad harmonies among the 14th c stone carved sarcophagi and elaborate marble inlay, the Roman mosaic floors, the fragments of Renaissance fresco, the deep sparkling smiles of the people of Naples.

The Via Toledo, a shopping street, is another microcosm of the universe, packed with moving crowds and street vendors. But there is a lightness, almost musicality in the air, so that the human traffic feels like a river sweeping you along with gentle force. In the brightly lit evening it is in full swing - a black Santa, fully costumed including a fluffy white beard, beats an African drum next to a building being repaired, down which slide loads of debris in rhythmic crashes. Little dogs wear identical fur trimmed coats even in the warm sun. Day and night, there are markets for every need: coats, underwear, makeup, Xmas decorations. A pudgy young boy emits an impossibly shrill whistling sound. Ladies in 4-inch heels whisk through churches, their shopping bags flapping, quickly crossing themselves. Reading glasses for 2 euros, o why o why didn't I buy more? Dresses for 10, winter coats for 20. At a market by the railroad station we got perfectly good smoked salmon for 1 euro a package, ditto the wonderful Neapolitan coffee.

But for a more remote perspective, one can climb up to the Vomero district, up hundreds of grand steps strewn with garbage and clothes, but enough grandeur to relish frequent pauses over Naples, wreathed in haze that grows yellow to the east. The snowy mountains of Campania, the great Renaissance domes among the dense buildings. Majestic walls support grand villas, interspersed with makeshift car parks, doors in walls, tenements with laundry hanging. On the Via Umberto I a district starts to take shape, with beautiful mansions and at the stairs' end stands the sumptuous Carthusian monstery whose complex surveys the panorama of Naples.

Carthusian Monastery

The church, with its splendid mosaic of marble floor and lavishly frescoed vault, leads into a series of rooms of ecclesiastical luxury. Choir stalls lead on one side to a cabinet of Renaissance inlaid wood of Biblical and Renaissance scenes, on the ceiling a flurry of fantastical angels celebrating a plump Judith holding the head of Holofernes. The Prior's quarters would have pleased Marie Antoinette immensely, rococo frescoes on vaulted ceilings with delicate decor. School children were everywhere, yelling, having accidents on the floor. The toilet was packed with them, and teachers were announcing "pee pee, ca ca!" You see, said Jacques, they have a choice!

Prior's quarters, Carthusian monastery

So we waited our turn, out among the cypresses, eucalyptus fragrance and juniper, three levels of monastic walkways over the Bay of Naples. Clouds began to gather and by the time we reached the Castel Sant Elmo dark thunderheads approached from the west leaving a few blinding glints of sunlight on the waters. We made it down just in time to duck into a restaurant out of the rain. The waiter was a hunched bald but highly loquacious guy, clever with a rhythmic sonorous voice, while a pretty young woman with a stern face emerged periodically from the kitchen to take care of the essentials. A table of 9 filled with loud kids sat beneath a TV with news of the world in Italian, including the Obama family and the White House Christmas tree.

Carthusian gardens

Creche displayed in La Pietrasanta

Another slice of life: We had lunch in a local café in Herculaneum, eating in the warmer back room, where an older woman lay in a chaise lounge right up against the TV next to a bucket of ashes. My minestrone was filled with frozen veggie's, while J's calzone was actually a huge pizza bent in half. The TV programs were a dubbed American show about weddings, with fat hostesses, then a real Italian (passionate and flamboyant) game show with the sinister looking face of the President of Sicily lurking behind them as in a conference call. And then there was yet another episode of Who Killed Sarah, more on that later.

Western Naples, from above

In the unheated train station in Herculaneum, which is furnished with a few wooden benches, young matrons sat in their quilted coats embroidering and knitting. Perhaps for the sunlight? An old newspaper in cyrilic lay near them and Jacques as usual picked it up and flipped through it. The women exchanged meaningful glances. Later Jacques put it down next to me and a frowning woman came over and snatched it up in indignation. We had invaded their private knitting circle, waiting for the train.

Doorway of apartment built into a wall

On the boat back from Capri, the saga of Who Killed Sarah continued on the TV screens above us. I googled the story. The Larry David look-alike on the TV screen, apparently calm, was Sarah's necrophiliac uncle who had strangled her and enjoyed her dead body which he then threw down a well in August, till December when he led police to it. (This was in the Puglia region, at the boot heel of Italy.) Her mother received half the news via live Italian talk shows. Italy is horrified and fascinated. RAI 1, the major state run channel, was devoting prime time to similar tales of infanticide.

Then we arrived in cold Naples and rushed home along the beautiful via Toledo, its night markets glowing.

Skeletons and other Neapolitan beliefs

We walked to Santa Maria delle anime del Purgatorio ad Arco one morning, via the high green courtyard of the Conservatory of Music, where voices soar and pianos roll in glorious chaos, and a plump young stone Beethoven sprawls. Santa Maria is, by contrast, a quiet place with its own raucous inner music.

The Baroque church is immaculate and light--only the altar painting hints at the peculiarly Neapolitan form of worship, the adoption of the skulls of the pezzentelle--little begging souls of purgatory. In the Manneristic painting a dark haired Neapolitan Madonna reaches down for the straining burning souls in Purgatory. What is hidden from view is the marble skull below it. The practice, exemplified also by the Fontanelle Cemetery with its caves of bones, was to adopt skulls, polish them, care for them, pray and make offerings for their anonymous souls. In 1600, at Santa Maria delle anime del Purgatorio ad Arco, as many as 60 masses a day were held for these anonymous souls by the superstitious poor, who received in turn favors from aristocratic believers. Encouraged by The Counter Reformation, which was very interested in the souls of Purgatory, the practice was banned by a Cardinal in 1969 but continued in force till 1980, with a special streetcar to handle the heavy traffic to the church. Due to the church's official position, I couldn't take pictures--I was not even allowed to keep the brochure.

Crypt of Santa Maria delle anime del Purgatorio

Below is the dark crypt for worshiping the bones and skulls that have been deposited at a deeper level in a mass grave for the poor. The bones are worshiped and prayed for, in hopes that the supplicant will be given the same favor. Skulls, bones, trinkets and photographs in gaudy little niches are covered with photographs of the supplicants who hope to be favored in the afterlife. Lucy, the Patroness of Brides, is celebrated --legend has it her rich father killed her because she fell in love with a poor man. (The tale has probably been developed over time.) Tables of photographs of the dead and the supplicants reminded me of New York in the days after 9/11. The nobleman who financed the church is prominently represented by his family's skulls.

Veiled Christ

A few streets over is the much-advertised Sansevero Chapel which was open even during siesta, at an exorbitant price--7 euros to visit the small chapel and 2 ghoulish "anatomical machines." Masonic Grand Master, alchemist and touted enlightenment figure, Raimondo di Sangro, seventh Prince of Sansevero, had engaged skilled sculptors for his family's mausoleum. He envisioned an artistic monument to initiation into higher mysteries. The chapel carries the mystique of his reputation as a magus. Most celebrated among the skillful marble sculptures are the Veiled Christ, a remarkably detailed marble of the body in a placenta-like veil, and the so-called figure of Modesty who is rather an extremely explicit body beneath a gauzy clinging veil, also in marble. Another tour de force in marble is the fish net over Raimundo's prodigal father, a dissolute man who woke up to the Lord late in life. The dense chapel is filled with pompous symbols and Baroque theatre, but it was most conspicuously filled with thuggish guards. We concluded the place had been taken over by the Camorra (Naples' crime family), as more and more strong men appeared at every minute to keep me from taking photos. They urged us to the lower level with its anatomical machines (skeletons) which were supposed to be wonders of the prince's alchemical skills. So-called "real blood vessels" enveloped the two skeletons, looking more like webs of gray metal. Rumors have since hounded the alchemist that he froze the blood of two young men while they were still alive.

Cloister, Carthusian Monastery

San Gaudosio Catacomb

Skeletons, in fact, are everywhere. Skulls line the cloister of the sumptuous Carthusian Monastery. Below Naples, in the Catacombs of San Gaudosio, Dominican monks who treated the corpses of Bishops also decorated the corridors by embedding skulls and sometimes whole skeletons into the wall plaster, painting whimsical clothing around them.

Gothic chapel of the Duomo

Another repository of very Neapolitan belief is the Duomo, where we walked in the driving rain one afternoon. The Cathedral to San Gennaro is an enormous cavernous church, originally gothic, now every surface Baroque marble, but an exquisite gothic chapel remains. The Tresoro is filled with gold reliquaries, including the famous one of San Gennaro that contains two vials of his blood. They are said to liquify on two religious days of the year--if they fail to do so, calamities are imminent. This centuries' old practice continues in the present. Priests parade the vials for the people to see and kiss--certainly the heat of all these worshipers must melt the substance in the vials!

Oldest Baptistery in the Western World

What is now a side chapel of the Duomo had been the original 4th c. church. Later it was cloaked in Baroque marble, an almost carnavalesque little theatre, but it retains a dignified 14th c mosaic chapel. And in a more primitive room from the original 4th c. church is the oldest Baptistery in the Western World. A rough stone basin sits in the brick floor, where supplicants were doused in rising springs. Then they had only to raise their eyes up to sparkling Byzantine mosaics of the 4th c.

4th c. Byzantine mosaics

In many churches the tin ex-votos lined up remind you of a general faith in healing powers. One bright morning we passed through a little street famous for its mandolins, pushing against the crowds of the dense neighborhood to the opulent Gesu Nuova church, the Jesuit monument to heavy marble and Jesus. The sun poured through high windows while Neapolitans prayed and confessed to priests with their unctuous smiles.

Ex-votos in Gesu Nuova

An entire wing is devoted to a priest-doctor who tirelessly treated the poor often at his own expense, icon to the stark contrasts with Jesuit extravagance. Joseph Moscati (1890-1927, sainted 1987) cared tirelessly for the helpless and the poor. He found them waiting for him on his doorstep when he came home for lunch, when he wasn't treating them in his cabinet. A prayer on the wall of Gesu Nuova reads:

Dear Saint, ... who always took care of both the body and soul of every patient,

Look on us, who have recourse to your heavenly intercession... a share in the dispensation of heavenly favours....

Ex-votos, il Cabineto Segreti

Good luck phallus from Pompeii

In Roman times, ex-votos were more vivid, as the piles of clay genitals displayed in the il Cabineto Segreti of the Pompeii collection reminds us. These were offerings to beg for healing, or in gratitude for an affliction cured. Also in this interesting collection are bronzes of huge male organs for good luck and protection from the evil eye--the malocchio. On the streets of Naples, countless chocolate male organs are sold for the same purpose.

Priapic phallus for good luck

Another very Neapolitan belief is in the smorfia, an ancient collection of dream symbols which interprets them as numbers that people use to play the lottery. It is still widely referred to, in fact people know parts of it by heart: if you dream of an insane person, bet on #22, if you dream of Naples or God, bet on #1, and so on. It has been traced back to the Greeks' interpretations of dreams, oneirocriticism, and has only been in published form since the Middle Ages. It is also said to be connected with the Kabbalah.

Household gods of Pompeii

As mentioned in my blog on Pompeii, household gods still command Neapolitan respect. The monacello, based on the Greco-Roman Larares, merit their own little plaques in the kitchen. I too dreamt of the little boy in a white tunic quite a few times in Naples, even before knowing who he was.

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Cloister of San Gregorio Armenio

At the convent of San Gregorio Armenio, a line of street people stands at the frescoed door, waiting for the pastries the round little nuns are known for. We went in with a class of giggling teens to the delightful cloister of orange trees under Baroque arches, a life-size Christ and the Samaritan woman. Below, through a grate, we glimpsed, between teenagers, the elaborate chapel that seemed like another dimension, with its geometric trompe l'oeil floor. Amidst the baking smells we exited to go around the crammed block to see it in its full Baroque ornamentation. The guidebook pointed out the symbolism of the order of San Gregorio: beheadings, blood, etc. But what struck me was the assimilation of Mary to a pagan cow goddess. Paintings everywhere featured crescent moons on their backs, with the horns pointing upward like cow horns. But most surprising, Mary on the altar painting wore the yoke of an ox on her shoulders!

San Gregorio Armenio

 Sacred and profane are the long Neapolitan traditions, to ward off ill fortune!