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.