Naples: Life, Death & Miracles vol. 1

By Jeff Matthews

This is volume 1 (A-D) of the second edition of the four-volume encyclopedia, Naples: Life, Death & Miracles. The entire set contains 690 separate essays, anecdotes and observations about Naples, Italy and cover history, music, literature, architecture, mythology, biography and general culture and traditions. They are meant to inform as well as amuse, and they range in style from the lighthearted to the serious and scholarly. The combined volumes cover everything from Driving in Naples to an Oral History of Naples in WWII, the San Carlo Theater, Greeks in southern Italy, lives of great writers and composers, the importance of dialect, etc. Is the entrance to Hell really here? Was Shakespeare a Neapolitan? Why do Neapolitans call themselves Parthenopeans? What is the hidden city beneath Naples, and can you really trip and fall into it? Why do they call it the Egg Castle? These and almost any other question you can think of will be answered somewhere in these entries. The volumes have ample graphics and are well indexed. The entries are in alphabetical order but can also provide a casual, jump-in-anywhere reading experience; they can serve as an encyclopedia or a guide. The entries have ample graphics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeff Matthews
• Release date: Apr 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476181165

Jeff Matthews

I am a longtime resident of Naples and have written about the area extensively. I have also taught English, linguistics and music history at local schools, universities as well as for the US military campus of the University of Maryland in Europe. I am originally from Los Angeles, California.

Book preview

Naples: Life, Death & Miracles

a personal encyclopedia

2nd edition

volume 1

A—D

by Jeff Matthews

Copyright 2012 Jeff Matthews

Smashwords Edition

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Introduction

This second edition of Naples: Life, Death & Miracles differs from the first edition in formatting plus additional content. All of the entries in these four volumes have now been alphabetized; they contain all the content in the earlier vols. 1-6 plus, by word count, about 10% more material. There are now about 570,000 words spread over 690 entries.

I do not anticipate another edition, but I will publish occasional supplements.

A word about the title. If you say in Italian that you know vita, morte e miracoli (life, death, and miracles) about someone or something, you are saying that you know everything there is to know. While I don't make the claim that these short independent pieces will tell you everything there is to know about Naples, it's still a charming phrase and my way of letting you know that if you are interested in Naples you should enjoy these items. The anthology is the result of my having lived and worked in Naples for many years and written extensively about the city and local area.

These small vignettes are intentionally wide-ranging. Some are meant to amuse and others are more serious. I have tried to touch on history, biography, music, archaeology, and traditions, among a few other things. In all cases, I hope the items are pleasant and informative to read. The pieces are relatively short and average less than 1,000 words each. (The cover photo on all four volumes is Faun playing cymbals & clapsticks. It is by Andrea Violani from 1763 and is a copy of an original at the Galleria degli Uffizzi in Florence. It was originally installed at the Caserta Palace and was moved to the Naples Villa Comunale in 1834. It is at the east entrance.)

The entries in the Table of Contents, below, are linked to the articles.

Table of Contents

—A—

Academia-Nepotism

Academy of Fine Arts

Achenbach, Oswald

Acton

Ad, Increase the Size of your

Advertising & English

agricultural archeology

Afragola TAV station

Agriturismo

Agropoli

A.I.A.P.

Airport, Capodichino

airport complaints

Albacini, Carlo

Albergo dei Poveri

Alburni Mts.

Alifana railway

Alnwick, William of

Amalfi

Amalfi & Abu Tabela

Amalfi Maritime Code

Amerigo Vespucci & sister ship

Amina-Picentia, ancient

Amphitheater (Pozzuoli)

Anacapri

Anacapri, church

Ancient Comedy Clubs

Ancient Peoples

Annunziata

Anticaglia, via

Antiniana, via

Apulian Aqueduct

Aqueducts

Arab Influence

Aragonese Naples

Archaic Units of Measure

Archbishop's Palace & Filomarino

Architecture, good & bad

Architecture of Fascism

Archives, state

Arcofelice

Arsenale

Artemis

Art Nouveau architecture

Art restoration

Art Theft

Ascensione a Chiaia

Aselmeyer Castle

Assassination attempt on Umberto

Astronomical Observatory

Austrian Naples

Avella

Averno, Lake

—B—

Bach and Gesù Nuovo

Bagnoli

Baia Castle & Museum

Baia, Temple of Venus

Ballet in Naples

Baloney

Balsorano, Palazzo

Bandits

Bank of Naples archives

Baptistery S. Giovanni in Fonte

Barber of Seville (all of them!)

Barons Who Couldn't Shoot Straight

Basile, G. & The Tale of Tales

Beach of Heaven, the

Bearded Lady

Bellini, Piazza

Bellini Theater

Bellini, Vincenzo

Benevento, Duchy of

Big Archie

Big Boats in Summer

Big Rock Cockayne Mountain

Bird Symbolism & Amalfi

Bombing of Naples by Zeppelin

Bonfires of St. Anthony

Bonnie Prince Jacopo

Books about Naples

bookshops & libraries

Botanical Gardens

Bourbon Coat of Arms

Bourbon origins

Bourbons (1735-1800)

Bourbons (1800-1860)

Bourbons in exile

Bovio, Libero

bridge, oldest

Bronze Age Pompeii

Bronze-Age Venice

Bruni, Sergio

Bruno, Giordano

Bubalus Bubalis

Buffalo Bill

Bull Fighting in Naples

Burney, C. (music in Naples)

busses & bus-drivers

—C—

cable-cars

cable-cars (2)

cable-lift, hare-brained

Café Chantant

Calabrian Quake, Great

Calore river

Camels

Camorra (the end of!)

Campi Flegrei

Capodimonte

Capri

Caracciolo, F.

Carasale, Angelo

Caravaggio

Carbonari

Cardarelli Hospital

Carmina Burana

Caroline, Queen

Caroline, Queen, other

Carolino Aqueduct

Caruso critics

Caruso, Enrico

Caruso tidbits

Casali, castles & forts

Casanova in Naples

Caserta Palace

Castel del Monte

Castle, Just another old

Castrati

Catacombs

Catastrophe, natural & otherwise

Caudine Forks

Caves & Tunnels & Holes

Cave-ins & Sink holes

Cavern of Mithra

Celano, Carlo

Cellamare, Palazzo

Cemetery, 366 Trenches

Center for ancient music

Centro Direzionale

Ceramic library (Rubino)

Cervantes in Naples

Chinese restaurants

Choreography

Christ Church

Cilea, F.

Cilento

Cimarosa, D.

Cimmerian Darkness

Ciociaria & Fiuggi

Circumvesuviana

Cirillo, D.

Città di Partenope

Coffee, real & Gambrinus

Colletta, Pietro

Colonna, Vittoria

Confederate Flag

Confusing statues

Constitution of Melfi

Contemporary Religious art (museum)

copyright (1)

copyright (2)

Copyright Laws

Counterfeits

Counter-Reformation & Valdez

Croce, Benedetto

Croce on Pergolesi

Crooked Streets

Crown of Aragon

Culture of Death

Cuma

Cuma oracles

Cumana railway

Cuoco, V.

Customs, new & old

—D—

Dante & the Vernacular

Dark Ages

de Crecenzo, L.

De Filippo, E.

De Filippo, P.

della Porta, G.

de Matteis, P.

De Sanctis, F.

De Simone, R.

Devil's Footprints

dialect, Neapolitan

di Giacomo, S.

Diplomatic Relations

di Sangro, R.

Dohrn aquarium

Donizetti, G.

Donkey Serenade

Driving

Duomo

Durante, F.

Dynasties (time-line)

* * * —A— * * *

Academia-Nepotism

Is Italian Academia a family business? It's apparently worse as you move south in Italy. It's pretty bad in Naples and really bad in Palermo. It is the unusually high clustering of last names within Italian academic institutions and disciplines indicating, widespread nepotism in the country's schools. This comes from an article by Stefano Allesina, Measuring Nepotism through Shared Last Names: The Case of Italian Academia [in PLoS ONE, 2011; 6 (8): e21160 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0021160] reported on-line in Science Daily. In recent years, says the article, several scandals have hit Italian academia over the hiring of close family members to prominent faculty positions at public universities [including the case of]...the chancellor of Sapienza University in Rome...investigated by an Italian news program after the hiring of his wife, son, and daughter to medical faculty positions. The article looked at the geographic distribution of nepotism across Italy and discovered a north-to-south gradient, with the probability of nepotism increasing as one looked south, peaking on the island of Sicily, mirroring similar negative statistics such as infant mortality, organized crime, and suicide rate that are higher in southern Italy compared to northern regions...For an Italian, this is not that surprising, said the author. It is a narrative of two separate countries, where in the public sector we have more problems in the south.

* * * * * * *

Academy of Fine Arts

The Naples Academy of Fine Arts is among the oldest academies in Europe. It was founded in 1752 at the behest of Charles III of Bourbon and was situated on the premises of the church of San Carlo alle Mortelle, the site of a pre-existing sculpture workshop. In 1780 the academy was relocated to the premises of the university (now the National Archaeological Museum) and moved again in 1864 (just after the Kingdom of Naples was joined to the nation state of Italy) to the current premises, the ex-convent complex of S. Giovanni delle Monache. The nucleus of that convent goes back to 1593. The monastery was closed under the reign of Murat in the early 1800s, but later reopened. In the 1850s, a massive restructuring of this ancient area (adjacent to the submerged Greek walls of the city) included the demolition of a nearby city gate and the laying of a new street that divided the convent church from the convent itself. The convent was then closed by the new Italy and restored to become the new art academy by Errico Alvino (1809-1876),* a professor at the academy and the architect in charge of the general rebuilding of the entire area.

The academy is near the Bellini Theater, the National Archaeological Museum and the music conservatory. The entrance is marked by two bronze lions, the works of Tommaso Solari (1829-1897), a prominent Neapolitan sculpture of the day. The entrance fronts on a pedestrian mall with the sidewalk cafes typical of many such places in Europe where young artists and musicians gather. Inside, there is a monumental double stairway (guarded by a replica of Michelangelo's David—photo, above) that leads up to a small theater, lecture halls, workshops, library, and art gallery on the two floors above and around the central courtyard; the stairway is the work of Giuseppe Pisanti (1826-1913)* The art gallery holds a large collection, mostly of works by artists connected in some way with the academy itself.

Currently, the curriculum is structured around courses of study of two years and three years in six departments: decoration, graphic design, painting, art restoration, stage and set design, and sculpture. The department of art restoration provides an additional two-year graduate program specializing in modern and contemporary art.

* Alvino was from Rome but was particularly active in Naples. His architectural output was prodigious. Besides the Art Academy, his other works in the city include designing the façade of the church of S. Maria di Piedigrotta [1853]; laying out (with others) what was effectively the first tangenziale in the city, the long east-west road, Corso Maria Teresa (today called Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, completed in 1870); planning the restoration of the façade of the Naples cathedral; redesigning (with others) the seaside park, the Villa Comunale, and adjacent area; and designing the main train station (1866), (eventually replaced in 1960).

* Pisani studied under Alvino at the art academy. When Alvino died in 1876, Pisani took over his position. He worked to finish his teacher’s projects; on his own, he designed primarily religious architecture in Naples and elsewhere in southern Italy. He had a reputation as a very creative architect and, above all, a humble person. He gave away his possessions towards the end of his life and retired to a single small room. His tomb at the Poggioreale cemetery was designed by one of his students, Silvio Castrucci.

* * * * * * *

Achenbach, Oswald

Achenbach was one of the foremost German landscape painters of the 1800s. He was born in Düsseldorf in 1827 and died there in 1910. He was educated at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He made trips to Italy, particularly to southern Italy, and most particularly to the area of Naples; his most representative work is of scenes in and near Naples, depicting not just landscape but the way of life of the people. He has some beautiful paintings of bathers and fisherfolk on the beach with Vesuvius in the background, but this night scene (above) appealed to me because of nostalgia. (That's strange. How can I be nostalgic about something I have never seen?) Fireworks in Naples, painted in 1875. It is currently in the collection of the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg.

The view is to the west just after sunset with the darkened Castel dell'Ovo at the extreme left. This view no longer exists today, as it is painted from the old Santa Lucia section of Naples. The lighted church below the height of Mt. Echia, just to the left of center (with the silhouetted fountain backlit by fireworks) is the Church of Santa Maria delle Catene. It still exists, but the street in front of it, via Santa Lucia, is now an inside road, having been cut off from the sea by entire square blocks of new buildings and a new outside coast road built during the great urban renewal, the Risanamento, at the end of the 1800s. That new area sits on land reclaimed from the ancient and picturesque small harbor of Santa Lucia seen in this painting. That harbor is gone. I have never seen it. As I say, a strange nostalgia.

* * * * * * *

Acton

If you read a little about Naples—or just walk around it a bit—sooner or later you come across the name Acton. Indeed, it is difficult to keep your Actons straight. This, then, may help.

The most recent Acton relevant to Naples is Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton (1904-1994), author of an authoritative 2-volume history of the kingdom of Naples under the Bourbons, The Bourbons of Naples (1957) and The Last Bourbons of Naples (1961). Harold Acton was one of the bright, young intellectual lights of British university life of the 1920s and such a supporter of new poetry that he once read Eliot's The Wasteland through a megaphone at a garden party at Oxford. Acton was apparently the inspiration behind Evelyn Waugh's fictional character, Anthony Blanche, in Brideshead Revisited, who pulled the same stunt in the novel.

Harold Acton was born at Villa la Pietra, his family's estate near Florence. He passed away there, as well, bequeathing his estate, including his Italian Renaissance villa and art collections to New York University. A bizarre episode connected with the bequeathal is that it was contested by five Italians who claim they are entitled to the estate because their mother was the illegitimate daughter of Acton's father, Arthur Mario Acton, making her Harold Acton's half-sister, whose children would be entitled to the estate since Harold died without heirs. The bizarre part is that earlier this year, an Italian court gave permission to exhume Harold's earthly remains for DNA testing: I don't know if that has been done.

The Acton name in Naples goes back to Sir John Francis Edward Acton (1736-1811), an Englishman who served with such valor in the service of the joint Spanish and Tuscan naval expedition against Algiers in 1775 that he came to the attention of Queen Caroline of Naples who acquired his services to reorganize the Neapolitan navy. He became the commander of the navy, then the minister of finance, and then the prime minister. He was also—according to most sources—the Queen's lover. On the occasions of both flights of the royal family to Sicily, first to escape the Neapolitan Republicans in 1799 and then the French invasion of 1806, Acton accompanied them and returned with them. Most notably, John Acton was responsible for the construction of the new Royal Naval Shipyards at Castellammare di Stabia. Vincenzo Cuoco, in his Saggio Storico sulla Rivoluzione di Napoli, remarks that Acton was an astute judge of character and the first one on the scene to really understand something that later became evident to all—in Naples, the king, Ferdinand, was an absolute dud; Queen Caroline ran the show. As an ally of the English and avowed enemy of the new French Republic, he is seen as at least partially responsible for provoking the French invasion of southern Italy that helped establish the Neapolitan—or Parthenopean—Republic in 1799.

John Acton's brother was General Joseph Edward Acton, who was also in the service of the kingdom of Naples. Presumably, Joseph had children. I know nothing about them, except that they will confuse any attempt at genealogical straight-thinking on my part. Anyway, John got a papal dispensation to marry his brother's 13-year-old (!) daughter. They had two children, one of whom was Charles Januarius Edward (1803-1847), who eventually became a cardinal in the Roman Catholic church and protector of the English College at Rome. John's other son was Richard Acton, whose only son was John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834-1902), the historian and one of the great intellects of Victorian England. He is remembered for writing The History of Freedom in Antiquity and The History of Freedom in Christianity and for being the prime mover behind the great Cambridge Modern History.

So, you say (if you are still awake), all this is how the street, via Acton, the road along the main port of Naples in front of the Maschio Angioino, got its name, right? No, that street is named for another Acton—Ferdinand. Oh, there are two of them. The first is Sir Ferdinando Acton (1801-1837), the gentleman who, in 1826, acquired the property for—and had built on that property—the magnificent Villa Pignatelli, a building that still graces the Riviera di Chiaia. I am not sure where Ferdinand came from—presumably from another Acton, possibly John's brother, Charles.

Via Acton, however, is named for the other Ferdinand Acton (1832-1891), an officer in the Neapolitan navy and then, following the unification of Italy, an admiral in the Italian navy and then Minister of the Navy. Sources tell me that his father's name was Charles, so that might make him the grandson or great-grandson of Charles, John's brother. Or maybe not.

[Luciano Mangiafico has kindly sent me the following:

1. The Florentine Actons were not related or descendent of the Neapolitan Actons;

2. General Joseph Acton had five children from his German wife; one of these, Marie Ann (c.1784-1873) married her uncle John Acton, the Bourbon King's Prime Minister, in Palermo in 1800;

3. John acton had three children from his niece: Elizabeth (c. 1804-1850). She lived in England and in 1829 married Sir Robert Truckmorton, a nobleman and long standing MP; Cardinal Charles Januarius (1801-47); and Ferdinand Richard Dalberg-Acton (1803-37), the father of the historian Lord Acton.]

* * * * * * *

Ad, Increase the Size of your

Someone has suggested paying for the coast of restoring parts of the Castel dell'Ovo (Egg Castle) by letting advertisers use the huge facade. That would be nothing new in Naples; recently, even the western facade of the San Carlo opera house was a giant billboard for months on end (photo, above). The Egg Castle is a bit different, however; it is the most visible large monument in Naples and iconic of the city; it is what all tourists see when they come to Naples. As a matter of fact, many of them see it from their balconies and windows since the castle faces the long row of 5-star hotels along the sea-front. Surely, they don't want to look at the world's largest billboard. Some have called the proposal obscene; others call it temporary and not a bad way to defray expenses. I hope they do it just so I can get a picture of it.

Skywriting is the first gigantic advertising I remember: mile-high letters at 10,000 feet—telling me to drink Pepsi. (That was impressive, but not as much as fake skywriting! I remember how disappointed I was to learn that the marvelous Surrender Dorothy message in the sky above Oz was special effects.) The most obnoxious big ad I have ever seen was the giant Camel cigarette billboard on Times Square in New York. It featured a guy blowing smoke rings from 1941 to 1966. (Not the same guy. He died.) I have not seen the newer eight-story cylindrical Nasdaq sign (with 8,200 separate panels run from a control room) that wraps around the Condé Nast Building at Broadway and 43rd Street in New York, but I am prepared to be suitably offended by it.

(The most memorable American ads were, of course, the Burma Shave signs. Each one consisted of five signs posted maybe 40 yards apart on God-forsaken stretches of desert road in the wide-open spaces out west. Much like sky-writing, they compelled your attention. Their little epiphanies of iambic tetrameter kept you awake waiting for the resolution:

A CHIN / WHERE BARBED WIRE

BRISTLES STAND

IS BOUND TO BE

A NO MA'AMS LAND

BURMA SHAVE

(I got so I could guess that last line pretty consistently!) The ads started in the 1920s and lasted until the 60s. They weren't big ads—just long ones, spread along a few hundreds yards of desolate road.)

Somewhere in the middle of all this is a newer technology that prints computer-generated images on giant rolls of vinyl. You have seen the smaller format images on the backs of busses. From the outside, the picture looks solid; from the inside, however, you can see out; this is especially helpful if you are a driver trying to use the rear-view mirror. The larger format, however, also produces wallscapes, multi-story images turned out in sections on very large printers and then joined at the seams when they are put up. Unlike hand-painted signs, which can take months to create, wallscapes can be up in a few hours. Such wallscape advertising is common in Naples and, strangely enough, I don't mind it, since it helps pay for a considerable amount of reconstruction of the facades of historic buildings.

There is an old wheeze about a window-washer's job never being done on a skyscraper; that is, when you finish, it's time to start over. That goes, as well, for restoring buildings in Naples. At any given time, there are dozens of projects going on in the city to restore the facades of buildings. The jobs range from mundane schools to historic churches to the San Carlo Theater (from 1737). Some of the work is done to repair the ravages of time and some of it is to undo the earthquake damage of 1980. Yet, there is so much to do, that the work is really never done.

The trick, however, is to make the work as invisible and as aesthetically pleasing as possible, especially in spots frequented by great numbers of tourists. In the old, pre-wallscape days, you simply put up scaffolding on the facade and draped anonymous green webbing down over the outside of the entire rig in order to keep hammers and chunks of plaster from falling onto unwary noggins below. Now, however, the finished product—the way the facade is going to look some day—is printed onto giant sheets of vinyl and those sheets then become the barrier between the outside world and workers scurrying about the scaffolding. You can ooh and aah at the picture and, then, when the magic day comes, they drop the screen and your oohs and aahs are already in the bank, so to speak. The whole screen is paid for by an advertiser who gets to put an outrageously oversized spot in the middle of the vinyl facade.

The most noticeable wallscape ad in Naples in recent years was on the west side of the San Carlo theater (photo, above). The make-believe facade looked good, and the ad in the middle changed periodically. There was some speculation that the giant walk sign on the Coke ad would confuse tourists; they would stare at the ad and cross the street without noticing that the real traffic light said Don't Walk. Dead pedestrians were at a minimum, however, since no one pays much attention to those signs in Naples, anyway.

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Advertising & English

Enough ESL (English as a Second Language), EFL (English as a Foreign Language), and ESP (English for Special Purposes)! I am going to start a school for EBL (English as a Broken Language) and use the billboard ads near my house as a text.

First of all, if you advertise it in English, that fact, alone, says something like, We are international, We are fashionable, We appeal to the cosmopolitan person of today. It is entirely in keeping with the de facto presence in the New Europe of English as an international language. The French don't like this, but that's tough.

On a billboard near my house is a picture of a woman shaving her legs. (Only my 19th-century sense of propriety keeps me from letting you see it!) Actually, all you see is the woman from the hips down. She is seated, and you see the bottom part of the fashionable pair of shorts she is wearing. A red brand label is visible on the shorts. Then, you don't see all of the legs, just the part she is shaving, the upper thigh. Her delicate hand is holding an equally delicate-looking but very modern, abstract razor that looks like it could double for some gizmo on Star Trek. Before I saw the text, I thought it was an ad for women's razors. Silly me. Then, I look at the text below the ad. It reads:

No superfluous. Just Exyn. Fashion and Blue Jeans Collection.

It's all in English. The incorrect form no for not is in the original. (In English, no negates a noun, as in No Smoking. Not negates an adjective, as in Not superfluous. In this case, Italians commonly think that no is used in both cases in English. It is part of their version of international English. It is also the same as the Italian word no, to mean the opposite of yes. It is close enough to what would be the correct Italian negative, grammatically, in this case: non. The word superfluous is equally similar to the Italian form, superfluo. In Italian, thus, the expression would be non superfluo. Why say it in English? Well, We are international, We are fashionable, We appeal to the cosmopolitan person of today. They are selling fashionable clothes, so it fits. If they were selling toilet plungers, probably not. The ad continues with just. That's not Italian, but close enough to giusto to have a dual-language pun. Giusto means correct in Italian and that might be called up in the mind of an Italian reading the ad.

The last part, Fashion and Blue Jeans Collection is fascinating. I am old enough to remember when blue-jeans were not fashionable. They were regarded as work clothes. You put them on to go work or play rough. Don't wear your good pants! Put on those old jeans! Mommy used to say. The idea that jeans would someday be included in a collection never would have occurred to me: Presenting Armani's new collection of Autumn jeans at the Grand Hotel, or something like that, still amazes me. Jeans have been elevated in a way that other American cultural icons such as rock 'n' roll and fast-food have not—that is, elevated to a state of elegance. This may have to do with the Italian love of the bella figura—looking good. It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not blue-jeans are functional clothing. In any event, jeans are part of the cultural invasion by the United States of the rest of the world.

So—nothing superfluous. The woman is shaving what is obviously superfluous pubic hair below the line of her fashionable shorts. Whether or not a woman shaving up there is (1) necessary, or (2) fashionable, an ad like this works, obviously, only in those places that make cultural assumptions about what hair is desirable and where. Message: there is nothing superfluous about our line of clothing, either. Just Exyn: non-superfluous, functional but good-looking and fashionable clothing.

* * * * * * *

agricultural archeology

Displays of industrial archaeology exist all over the western world, converted rust belts, now museums where we revisit the pre-plastic age when we mined minerals and made steel. In Sardinia, for example, there is the Geo-mining Historical and Environmental Park to ...recover and maintain the entire set of mining infrastructures for environmental, scientific, educational, cultural and tourist purposes. In Naples, a similar project is underway with the steel industry on the premises of what used to be the Italsider steel mill in Bagnoli. It was an industrial plant that for a century was as solid in the west as Vesuvius was in the east; they were both big and belched smoke and, at least in human terms, Italsider, too, seemed anchored in the earth and there to stay. The archives of the former Ilva steel mill (later called Italsider) are now hosting an exhibit entitled La memoria d'acciaio [Remembering Steel] on the premises of the ex-mill. It is a photographic and industrial artifact museum, plus documentation that contains a few surprises, such as the one that has astounded everyone: When the original decision was made (at the turn of the 19th-to-20th century to build a steel mill in Naples, it was planned for the eastern part of town, in what was already the center of early industry. They changed the plan and put it in the west, thus defacing (ah, the perfect vision of hindsight!) the Bay of Pozzuoli, what was once one of the most scenic bays on the planet.

* * * * * * *

Afragola TAV station

TAV stands for treni alta velocità—high speed trains. They are common now in many parts of Europe. Considering the time wasted getting to and from airports and being herded around inside of them, travel times by TAVs are competitive for mid-range distances of, say, 500-700 km (300-500 miles). The prices are competitive, too. The Italian TAVs provide service, for example, from Milan to Naples in as little as 4 hours and 10 minutes and from Rome to Naples in 1 hour and 10 minutes. The goal is to span the entire boot of Italy with a high-speed train corridor from Milan to Reggio Calabria. The high-speed corridor is largely complete as far south as Salerno.

Crucial to the completion of the network in the south is the planned interchange station at Afragola (artist's drawing, above), near the main Naples train station. It will hook northern and southern Italy together, be linked to municipal Naples train services, and also provide easy access to the main north-south autostrada highway. That Afragola transfer station was started about five years ago, but work was interrupted almost immediately for financial reasons. Work is to started again in August, 2010, and was to be finished in 2011. Work was intermittent and the station is not complete. A recent press conference says Spring 2013.

It will be a high-class signature station as they say when a high-class architect is called in—in this case, Iraqi-born futurist Zaha Hadid. She has about 20 completed structures throughout the world, and they are stunning, including, in Italy, the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts in Rome. The Afragola station will cover an area of some 38,000 sq, meters (about 9.3 acres) and include a large park and hotels.

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Agriturismo

Agriturismo is not what it used to be. Throughout Italy, that term refers to the small off-the-beaten-track farm partially converted to an inn, a place for guests to wander in, enjoy a home-cooked country meal, stay a night or two, and maybe even go out and look at the horses and goats. This combination of dude ranch and bed-and-breakfast remains most common in central Italy, but over the last 15 years in the idyllic setting of, say, the hills of the Sorrentine peninsula or in the Cilento region south of Salerno, the idea has taken hold—the small country road, the farmhouse, the orchards, the old wooden mill out in front for display with other antique farm tools handed down from the proprietor's father and his father before him. Indeed, I have stayed in such places, myself. They really do exist.

Or did. The carabiniere corps known as NAS (Nucleo Antisofisticazione) is in charge of quality control of products meant for human consumption. They are the ones that check the chemicals in food, the purity of drinking water, the hygienic conditions in slaughterhouses, etc. In places that take guests, NAS also checks the hygienic and safety conditions. NAS has just issued a report on the state of agriturismo in Italy. The news is not good. Of the 617 establishments checked, 184 of them had violations, some of them serious enough to warrant punitive legal action. Violations were disproportionately high in southern Italy—Campania, Abruzzo, and Calabria—and included faulty sanitation, improper ratio of guests to available space, lack of safety measures, poor conservation of food and improper slaughtering of animals for meat.

A number of establishments did not even seem to be agriturismo in the accepted sense of the term. They were little more than restaurants or hotels that had decided to cash in on our societal yearning for—and lemming-like summer rush to return to—the good old days. These places were by a main road, say, and just decided to hang their agriturismo shingle on that one tree out in the parking lot. I have not given up on the quest for the perfect, small family-farm with the authentic cheese, wine and bread, the one with the scythe from 1840 mounted over the fireplace. Nor should you give up, but if it has a blinking neon sign, alternating blue and yellow for "agri- and -turismo," keep driving.

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Agropoli

A few minutes south of Paestum, at the southern end of the Bay of Salerno, is Agropoli. The name—clearly from Greek acropolis—does, indeed, mean high city, but there is no evidence at all that the town is any older than the century following the fall of the Roman empire. The hill upon which the nucleus of the original town sits was probably first inhabited in the fifth century AD by Byzantine forces who were contending for Italy with great numbers of Goth invaders sweeping down the peninsula at the time. Two things stand out about Agropoli today. One is the Saracen castle, built by the Byzantines. The term Saracen castle or Saracen tower is used throughout the coastal regions of southern Italy to describe hundreds of structures built by the various rulers of the Kingdom of Naples, first to watch for Arab incursions in southern Italian waters and later for Ottoman Turks. Saracens thus became a generic term for Muslim pirates. Interestingly, the Saracen castle in Agropoli was actually inhabited by Saracens—and for quite a number of years (from 882, when they took it from Byzantines, to 1028 when they were finally expelled by the Normans). Remains of Arabic inscriptions attest to the Saracen presence in Agropoli.

The other interesting point about Agropoli is the fact that the original city, the area high on the hill surrounding the fortress is still inhabited. In fact, there are even ‘for-rent’ signs, evidence perhaps of the town’s significant renaissance in the age of mass tourism. After all, there are good beaches nearby, so why not hole up for a summer high on an ancient fortress hillside? The castle, itself, is now a private home, museum and convention center of sorts. You can visit it by just ringing the bell, thus bidding the lord of the manor to grant you entrance. (If that doesn’t work, threaten him with your cross-bow. A small fee will also do nicely.) You can do the obligatory drawbridge and dungeon tour—failing, of course, to keep your merlons and crenels straight—and then stop and rest, still high on the hill and sheltered by the bulwarks of the castle, itself, at one of the pizzerias and restaurants that the inhabitants have seen fit to add in the last 1,500 years. Then, meander down to the newer parts of town on the lower slopes, appreciating how urban expansion must have changed as castles on high ground gradually lost their strategic importance.

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A.I.A.P. (Friends of the Presepe)

The acronym stands for Associazione italiana amici del Presepio (the alternate spelling of presepe, the traditional Nativity manger display) [Italian Association of Friends of the Presepio]. It is a nation-wide organization and has existed since 1953 with chapters throughout Italy and in Spain and Malta. The Naples chapter is on a small street called Rua Catalana not from Piazza Municipio. It sponsors annual presepe displays at various sites in Naples every year as Christmas nears. Generally, dozens of artists working in the presepe tradition present examples of their work. The organization involves local schools when possible and presents awards to pupils taking part in presepe-building competitions in schools.

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Airport, Capodichino

I remember when Naples Capodichino airport looked like an airfield in documentaries about WW2 —maybe even WW1: windsocks on the runway and strange little people in goggles and flying scarves running around mowing the airstrip and hand-cranking Fokker triplanes. Well, maybe not all that, but there were no newfangled accordion tubes that snuggled up to the side of the planes for easy on–and–offloading of contented passengers. There were no contented passengers. There were no busses, either; you walked out onto the tarmac to your plane. Sometimes they got your bags out there before you left; sometimes they didn't. Indeed, it was a throwback to those glorious early days of aviation. They still spelled it aeroplane, as I recall.

Since the reinvention of mass tourism in the Bay of Naples, that has changed. The sign now says Naples International Airport and the place deserves the appellation. The passenger terminal was more than simply expanded; it was rebuilt. It is new, spacious, and comfortable with all the bars, shops and other creature comforts that one expects while one waits. There is also ample parking, one of the few places in Naples to enjoy that comfort so necessary to 21st–century creatures.

The problem now is that no amount of expansion of the facilities can handle the projected traffic. There are grand plans to open up the military airport in nearby Grazzanise (about 35 miles from Naples near Capua) to passenger traffic. It was tried once, out of necessity, some years ago when the Capodichino airport was partially closed for modifications. The plan, if it goes forward—and that depends on complicated negotiations between the Italian air force and various civilian agencies that have an interest in air traffic in and out of Naples—is to route charter tourist traffic through the new facility. Since much tourist traffic is directed not to the city of Naples, itself, but to other areas of the Bay such as Sorrento and the islands of Ischia and Capri, and since the Grazzanise airport is near the A-1 autostada that runs into the city, the plan might entail nothing more inconvenient than a slightly longer bus ride for passengers, no matter what their destination. When it comes time to rebuild the area in front of the Naples airport to put in an underground stop for the metro train line—and the plans look ambitious—they may have no choice but to reroute to another airport. Me, I have a Fokker to crank.

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airport complaints

You don't need Bernoulli's Principle to know which way the wind is blowin'. Recent letters to the editor in the papers have complained about Capodichino airport and planes landing from the south-west, over the heavily-populated Vomero section of Naples. It's dangerous and it's noisy, they say, and flights come in until one in the morning. True, true and true. They didn't use to do that and the airport authorities don't care about real people, they say. Wrong and wrong.

The physics of flight require planes to take off and land into the wind; it increases relative air-speed over the wings, providing more lift, which is just what you want when you are trying to maneuver a giant tin can through the two most dangerous stages of flight—take-offs and landings. The run-way at the Naples airport runs exactly NE to SW. Most of the time, the prevailing wind blows in from the sea—that is, from the SW; thus, planes usually take off into that wind and climb out steep over the city to avoid disturbing the folks below as much as possible. They then land from the NW over the less populated areas of Naples to the north-west of the airport. But—recent winds have been from the north and north-west, requiring take-offs in the other direction, which bother no one, but landings in from the sea over the city can indeed be disturbing. The angle of descent on final approach has to be a gentle as possible for the good folks in the cabin; thus, you have flights coming in low over the city. Some day the winds will change and things will be back to normal.

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Albacini, Carlo

Carlo Albacini (1735-1813) was an Italian sculptor and one of the foremost copiers and restorers of classical Greek and Roman statuary of his day. Not a great deal is known about his early personal life, but he was a pupil of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, an eminent sculptor and restorer of Rome. Albacini's copies are found throughout Europe; his work in Naples is most closely associated with the Farnese collection in the National Archaeological Museum. He worked on the restoration of many of the originals from 1786-89, in preparation for their transfer to Naples. He modified, in accordance with the tastes of the new Neoclassical style, repairs that had been done in the past. He is not to be confused with his son, also Carlo and a sculptor (1777-1858).

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Albergo dei Poveri

—the Royal Poorhouse, or, How the White Elephant Lost its Color

In Buddhist lore, a white elephant is said to have revealed to the mother of the Buddha that she was going to give birth to the Enlightened One. Thus, in many parts of Asia, the albino elephant is sacred. It does not lead the weary life of toil of your average working class pachyderm. On the contrary, the sacred animal must be sheltered, tended, worshipped and, of course, fed. The ancient kings of Siam are said to have ruined enemies—or maybe just taught upstarts a severe lesson—by presenting the gift of just such sacred creatures, gifts that had to be pampered and fed for the next 60 or 70 years. A few Holy Jumbos could eat you out of house and home. In English, then, the term white elephant has come to be a metaphor for something that is big, useless and ruinously expensive to maintain.

In Naples, the Whitest Elephant of All is the Albergo dei Poveri, or the Royal Poorhouse, the mammoth structure on via Foria, begun in the mid-1700s to care for and educate the indigent of the Kingdom of Naples. The Albergo was ordered built in 1751 by Charles III, the first Bourbon monarch of the Kingdom of Naples. It was designed and started by Ferdinando Fuga and then continued by Luigi Vanvitelli, the great architect of the Bourbon Royal Palace in Caserta (the so-called Versailles of Italy). The idea, in those days, of constructing a mammoth poor house along via Foria, one of the principle entrances to the city of the eighteenth century, was in keeping with promoting the image of Charles III as an enlightened monarch and the image of his kingdom as one of compassion. It was also in keeping with a wave of such social construction throughout Italy in that century in the form of poor houses, hospitals and communal granaries. (Indeed, in Naples, there was even a grotesquely efficient paupers’ graveyard with a numbered communal plot for each day of the year (see: Cemetery, 366 Trenches).

The original plan for the Hospice was to have one long façade fronting five internal courtyards, the central one of which would house a high-domed gigantic church that was to be the inner hub of the entire building; from that hub, passageways were to radiate out to dormitories, dining halls, workshops, and gardens. It was actually envisioned as a sort of self-sufficient small village. The intentions of Charles III were never fulfilled. The anti-clericalism of French rule between 1806 and 1814 in Naples put an end to the central church, and two of the five courtyards were eliminated, thus giving the present configuration of one central courtyard and one on each side. Thus, by 1820 the plan to build a poor house bigger than most royal palaces had become much less ambitious. That part of the building that had been finished, however—and it was impressive—remained in use through WW2, and in its long history the mammoth buuilding has housed everything from trade schools to hospitals to the back-up archives for the city of Naples. After WW2 they even put in a football field in a courtyard to keep the local kids out of trouble. Also, there are currently some 85 families living in the building, housed in flats around the courtyard behind the east third of the façade. They are, by now, the grandchildren of the needy families that were situated there after WW2. Thus, even in its unfinished state, it has served the city.

Real neglect began after WW2, and the last 50 years have been a disaster. Also, the building suffered considerable damage in the earthquake of 1980; yet, the consensus is that it is still structurally sound. In 2002 the main entrance and adjacent rooms were restored as part of a teaching project to help build a cadre of masons, builders and artisans trained in historical restoration. The restored section is open and houses exhibitions of one sort or another. In February 2003 plans were approved to restore the building to the unfinished state of the early 1800s. That is, no attempt, for example, will be made to build the mammoth church that was originally planned for the main courtyard of the building. The various rooms will then be available for various functions and possibly even private enterprises that do not offend the history of the building.

The restored façade is impressive; however, one façade—even a very large one—doth not a restoration make. The building is not only 300 meters long; it is a city block wide with internal courtyards and a long back wall. It is an ambitious undertaking, essentially rebuilding what was originally meant to be a magnificent view as visitors to the city would come down from the Capodimonte hill and pass by this sparkling example of Bourbon largesse and social concern. When the French then ruled Naples for nine years (1806-1815), they built a broad road (present-day name, via Don Bosco) down the hill into the city, planning a Triumphal Arch approximately where Piazza Carlo III is today. Visitors were to pass beneath the arch and have the splendid Albergo dei Poveri on their right. The French left and the arch was never built. Even without it, a rejuvenated Albergo will still be a cornerstone of sorts—possibly the beginning of a further rejuvenation of that entire section of the city; yet, none of the rest of the building, shows much sign of progress towards the purported goal of turning the whole thing into a Youth City, a giant assemblage of schools, activity rooms, and multimedia facilities. If you stand in front of the building and stare up at and through the top row of windows, you find yourself staring at blue sky. There is no roof left in many sections. Furthermore, in 2008 experts decided that the white they chose for the restored façade was not the original color! So a do-over may be coming sooner or later. It was originally meant to be a pink elephant.

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Alburni Mts.

Pastoralism, the Lucanians & the Alburni Mounts

or

Green Pastures on the Flank of the Dove

The Costa Palomba is the south-western flank of the Alburni Mounts (here, seen from across the Calore valley). The town on the slope in the center is Castelcivita at 526 meters (c. 1700 feet). The plateau slopes upward to the northwest from about 1100 m. with peaks above 1700 m. (c. 5500 feet). The high flank, dropping off on the left, is directly above the Paestum plain.

The term costa in Italian generally means the same thing as coast in English—a stretch of land bordering on the sea. It can, however, also mean mountain side, or flank of a mountain. Thus, in the Cilento Hills just a few miles inland from Paestum, the remarkable geological feature uplifted between the Calore river (in the valley in the center of the above photo) and the Sele river (on the other side, not visible in this photo) is called i monti Alburni, the Alburni Mounts, named for the principal height on the plateau, Mount Alburno, visible in the photo (the