Naples Life,Death Miracle

Time 2020-11-13 11:03:52

Web Name: Naples Life,Death Miracle

WebSite: http://naplesldm.com

ID:114507

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Since March 14, 2020, I've had a lot of email. I have no funny stories about the current crisis, so this photo will have to do. It was taken by Danilo Volpe, one of the persons who runs La Briocheria coffee bar the day before they had to shut down. I hope to see them open again in the near future. I thank all of you for your messages of concern and good will. I can't answer them all. I'm understaffed ( just me), but thank you. I couldn't do this without the IT magic of a server and ISP. Talk about understaffed: Vincenzo and Marco (that's all) of Shift-Left, inc. They keep this thing going, and I don't know how they do it. I thank them, as well. Stop worrying! Hang in there. I'll do the same. p.s. Go wash your hands. Click on image for a sample article from letter S Prefixes of churches: San (S. or Ss=saints), Sant', Santa (S.), Santa Maria (S.M.), and Santissimo/a (SS.=for The Most Holy Redeemer, Christ/the Most Holy Virgin Mary, respect.) are listed first. Other entries under S follow thereafter S (general). San Ss. (Saints)- Click on image for a sample article from letter S Prefixes of churches: San (S. or Ss=saints), Sant', Santa (S.), Santa Maria (S.M.), and Santissimo/a (SS.=for The Most Holy Redeemer, Christ/the Most Holy Virgin Mary, respect.) are listed first. Other entries under S follow "I wonder how they got in!" people would say. It had worked for the Greeks against the Trojans and it had even come off once before in this very city of Naples back in the 6th century when the Byzantine general, Belisarius, sneaked his men past the city walls through an aqueduct. Now it was going to work again; Alfonso's cohorts within the city opened the passage and let the invaders in. And just as under Belisarius, the subsequent sacking and pillaging was atrocious, but Naples was now rejoined to Sicily, unifying the Kingdom of Two Sicilies for the first time in two hundred years. Afterwards, Alfonso went back outside so he could enter the city officially on February 26, 1443 in a golden chariot and sheltered by a canopy held by 30 disgruntled Neapolitan noblemen. That entry is memorialized in the Aragonese victory arch over the entrance to the Maschio Angioino, the Angevin Fortress. It was a task the nobles did not like, for a king they did not like, at the beginning of a dynasty they would not like. Shortly thereafter, Alfonso left his Spanish holdings to his brother and dedicated himself full-time to his own Aragonese dynasty in Italy.(Technically, the kingdom of Naples was part of the Crown of Aragon, a little-remembered term. It was a loosely connected and vast sea-faring confederation united by allegiance to the king of Aragon. It was short-lived (because the nation state of "Spain" was about to form by the fusion of the houses of Aragon and Castille). (See image, below. Note that the Crown of Aragon extended even into Greece.) Neapolitans always considered Alfonso (image, above) a foreigner, particularly because of his habit of surrounding himself with only his own countrymen and giving them the choice positions at court. Apparently, towards the end of his life he changed his mind about this and passed on to his son a few bits of advice: avoid the Spanish, lower the taxes and keep on good terms with the princes in Italy, especially the Popes. Alfonso was regarded as a cultured person; he founded an excellent library, and artists, poets, philosophers and scholars were an integral part of his court. In the field with his troops, he lived the same life as his men and exposed himself to danger in battle with no regard for his own personal safety. They say he also went among the common people incognito to find out how things were going. He liked to listen rather than talk and claimed to be a simple person, once saying he would have been a hermit if he had had his choice in life. Because of his patronage of the arts he became known as Alfonso the Magnanimous. He also started the total rebuilding of the Angevin Fortress, fallen into ruin since its completion in the late 1200s; he paved the streets of the city, cleaned out the swamps and greatly enlarged the wool industry that had been introduced by the Angevins. In spite of his pretensions to simplicity, he was addicted to splendor. At a Neapolitan reception for Frederick III of Germany, the order of the day to all the artisans in the Kingdom was to give Frederick's men whatever they wanted and send Alfonso the bill. Then they all went hunting in the great crater known as the "Astroni" in the Phlegrean Fields and had a banquet at which wine flowed down the slopes and into the fountains for the guests. Parties, however, did not prevent Alfonso, by the time of his death in 1458, from also having developed the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies into the foremost naval power in the western Mediterranean. Alfonso's illegitimate son, Ferrante, succeeded him and, in spite of extreme hostility on the part of the feudal lords in the kingdom, succeeded in strengthening the monarchy at their expense. He also drove the Angevin fleet from Ischia, their last stronghold in the area. Ferrante countered baronial hostility most violently. To show the barons that feudalism was truly dead he made a lot of them dead, by doing things such as inviting them to weddings and then arresting, jailing and executing a number of them. They say that some were fed to a crocodile that prowled the dungeon. (A skeleton of one such reptile hung over the arch in the Castle until quite recently.) He even mummified some of his late enemies and kept them on display in the dungeon of the Castelnuovo (the alternate name for the Maschio Angioino, meaning, simply "New Castle", thus distinguishing it from the older Castel dell'Ovo, the Egg Castle). A sigh of relief went up from the landholding class when Ferrante died in 1494 after 28 years on the throne. It had been a time of intrigue which included on-again/off-again relations with the Church and even a short-lived treaty with the feared Turks who were raiding up and down the Italian coasts. The point of the treaty had been to warn the rest of Italy to the north not to take the Kingdom of Naples for granted. (The Ottoman Turks had just overrun the Byzantine Empire and were threatening Rome, itself.) The French reappeared with designs on the throne of Naples. Under Ferrante's successor, Neapolitan resistance to the French was utterly ineffective and the French, under Charles VIII, took the city virtually unopposed; indeed, they were welcomed by most of the nobility, who sensed a chance to recoup their losses. Their toadying didn't work. The French pillaged the city, anyway, and dispossessed a number of the nobles. Charles, however, suddenly found himself cut off: The Papal State, Milano, and Venice which had just let Charles pass through unhindered on the way to Naples suddenly formed an alliance behind and against him. Charles had to fight his way back home, attempting along the way, and failing, to bribe the Pope into crowning him King of Naples. The jibe by historians is that the French brought two things back from their Italian campaign: the Renaissance and syphilis, one of which history has dubbed morbus gallicus in their honor. France then tried something else: the proposal of an Alliance to Ferdinand of Spain against Spain's own Aragonese relatives in Naples, by virtue of which the Kingdom of Two Sicilies would cease to exist and be divided between Ferdinand and Charles. This would effectively give them both one less rival realm in the area, as well as squelch the heresy that it wasn't nice to carve up one's own cousins. Ferdinand went for it and even Machiavelli, himself, later said that Ferdinand had certainly needed no lessons from anyone in ruthless princemanship. The pact of Granada was signed on 11 November 1500; the Kingdom was to be divided, with the capital, Naples, going to France. The French reentered Naples in July 1501. It now seemed, however, that both France and Spain had had their fingers crossed at the signing of the original treaty, so they had a war over it and Spain won. In May 1504 Spanish troops evicted the French and entered Naples, ending the Aragonese dynasty. The Kingdom, intact, became a colony of Spain. Naples was now no longer the capital of its own realm. In a few year's time, with Charles V of Spain crowned Holy Roman Emperor, heir to the Caesars and Charlemagne, it would be part of an empire as it had been more than a thousand years earlier. True, the East had fallen and what was left of Christian Empire was all in the West, but after 1492 'West' meant something monumentally different in human history. The Empire had shifted, spreading from Europe to the Americas and on to the Pacific. The age of Empires on which "the sun never sets" had arrived. Close One of the most interesting bits of architecture in the vast outdoor (and underwater!) museum that is Baia is the so-called Temple of Venus (photo, right) . It is directly adjacent on the west to the entrance to the small lovely port of modern Baia. The structure was built in the reign of Hadrian (117-137 AD). It offers striking evidence of the evolution that took place in Roman architecture during the Julio-Caludian period. There is a clear difference between this building, characterized by a high tambour (the circular vertical part of the cupola) with a circular internal plan and external octagonal one with large windows, and the elementary structure of other, earlier buildings in the area. The use of opus cementicium as the main binding ingredient had reached perfection; this is a mixture of stone chips and strong mortar that contained pozzolana (a volcanic ash named for the town of Pozzuoli). This newer technology as well as an increasingly specialized workforce led to the construction of buildings where space was conceived of in a different and very modern way; mixtilinear (combing both straight and curved lines) forms of architecture started to become more widespread and were marked by bright spaces designed to be aesthetic and pleasing to the eye and not merely lived in. This Temple of Venus is “so-called” because it was really something else (as is the case with a number of other “temples” in the area—the Temple of Serapis in Pozzuoli, for example). In this case excavation has shown the structure to have been a thermal bath, the baths of which reach down to about six meters below today’s visible ground level. The outer face is in brick, with large porticos of reticulatum; inside, the walls were dressed with slabs of marble up to the impost of the windows and higher up with mosaic. The outside still shows traces of the original stone facing. The dome was formed by an umbrella vault; a part of the octagonal roof remains visible from the outside. The lower part of the building, on which other only partially visible buildings lean, has become difficult to interpret; this is due not just to the lowering of the ground level caused by seismic activity, but also due to the restoration designed to reinforce the structure at the beginning of the 20th century. The thermal baths were connected to a structure in the rear and stretched along the slope of the hill. [Other Caracciolo is an old and prominent Neapolitan surname. There are at least 50 bearers of that name in the current Naples phone book. Indeed, the name has divided into various branches over the centuries"Caracciolo of here" and "Caracciolo of there," resulting in some very impressive listings in the directory. There is a "Prince Landolfo Amrogio Caracciolo di Melissano". That is the longest one I see, although, without a title, Francesco Alberto Caracciolo di Torchiarolo" edges him out by a few letters. (From the address in the phone book, he is my next-door neighbor, although I don't know why that should matter to me.) There are even four different streets named via Caracciolo in Naples: Batistella Caracciolo (renowned painter of the Neapolitan Baroque, contemporary of Ribera and Caravaggio); Bartolomeo Caracciolo, about whom I know nothing; T. Caracciolo (the T stands for Tristan, I think); and the one that all Neapolitans think of when they hear the name "Caracciolo" Francesco (portrait, above). The splendid road that runs from Mergellina to Piazza Vittoria along the sea, fronting the Villa Comunale, thus, is named for Francesco Caracciolo (1752-1799), the Neapolitan admiral whose name is dramatically linked in history with the rise and fall of the Neapolitan Republic of 1799 and with the principal players in that episode: Queen Caroline, King Ferdinand, Lady Hamilton, and, especially, Horatio Nelson. (Besides the links in the previous sentence, other entries about this period include: The Bourbons, part 1; Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel; Cardinal Ruffo, Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, and On Trial for their Reputations.) Francesco Caracciolo was born January 18, 1752 of a noble Neapolitan family. He entered the navy at a young age and fought with distinction with the Kingdom of Naples' ally, the British, in the American Revolutionary War. He also fought the Barbary pirates and against the French at Toulon. In December of 1798, the Neapolitan monarchy fled the capital in the face of the insurgent Neapolitan republican forces backed by the French army at the gates of the city. The King and Queen fled to Sicily on Nelson's ship, Vanguard, escorted by Caracciolo on the Neapolitan frigate Sannita. Caracciolo returned to Naples in January to take care of private matters and arrived in the city after the Republic had been declared. His behavior at that point has remained the subject of speculation. Either he resented being snubbed by King Ferdinand, who had fled aboard Nelson's vessel and not Caracciolo's, or he was appalled at the cowardly flight, itself, or he was truly taken with the newly proclaimed Neapolitan Republic. Whatever the case, he took command of the naval forces of the new Republic. In other words, he betrayed his king. He led the Republican navy against royalist Neapolitan and British naval forces for the brief life of the Republic, his last major engagement being an attack on the British flagship, Minerva, inflicting damage on that vessel. The Republic, however, was doomed by the withdrawal of French forces from Naples and by the arrival of the royalist Army of the Holy Faith under Cardinal Ruffo. Caracciolo was captured. His trial is a matter of record and takes place against the whole backdrop of deceit by which the Royalist forces actually retook the city. The agreed to an armistice, promised safe passage to Republican defenders (presumably including Caracciolo), and then put the Republicans on trial, anyway. The church of Santa Maria della Catena, final resting place of Admiral Caracciolo. There was never any doubt as to Caracciolo's fate. Queen Caroline had relayed to Nelson her wish that Caracciolo should hang, no matter what. Caracciolo was tried aboard a British ship, Foudroyant, by Neapolitan royalist officers and charged with high treason. He was not permitted to call witnesses in his defence. He was condemned to death by three votes to two. He was not given the customary twenty-four hours for personal matters of the spirit. His request to be shot was denied and he was hanged from the yardarm of the Minerva on the morning of June 30, 1799. His body was weighted and thrown into the sea. One of the mainstays of modern Neapolitan mythology is that the body refused to sink, floating to the surface and eerily bobbing its way towards shore. Indeed, there is even a painting showing King Ferdinand aboard his ship, aghast at the sight of the admiral's corpse floating alongside. Whatever the case, Caracciolo's body was retrieved from the sea and his remains now rest in the small church of Santa Maria della Catena in the Santa Lucia section of Naples (photo, above). [Also see this excerpt from Robert Southey's Life of Nelson on the execution of Caracciolo.] Close Except for occasional ceremonial use in civil life, such as getting a college diploma, or the electronic metaphor of "scrolling" on a computer screen, we don't much use scrolls anymore those rolls of paper with writing on them. In some religious use, however, they are still prominent. The Scroll of the Law in Judaism is one that contains the Torah or the Pentateuch; it is bound by elaborate rollers befitting the high ceremonial occasion for which it is used. Generally speaking, scrolls started to be replaced by books under the Romans in the first century AD; by around 300 AD, these two formats of "parchment media" were on a numerical par in Europe. The spread of Christianity was important in the gradual, but irresistible, replacement of scrolls by books in Europe well before the year 1000. Books are easier to read, store, and transport. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine a modern church service with scrolls. ("Please scroll through in your hymnals to 'Yes, We'll Gather by the River'it should be about 12 feet into the scroll. I'll take ten and go get coffee while you look!") It is, thus, interesting that religious services of a certain kind were responsible for the comeback of the scroll around the year 1000 at least religious services of a certain kind and in certain places. These were the so-called Exultet Rolls in southern Italy. The Exultet is the Easter Proclamation (in Latin, the Praeconium Paschale) the hymn of praise sung by the deacon for the blessing of the Great Easter candle during the Easter Vigil in Roman Catholicism and some Protestant denominations of Christianity. The Exultet rolls were parchment scrolls containing text and music for this blessing. (See notes at end for an additional comment on the musical notation.) The scrolls were widely used in the 10th and 11th centuries.*1 Traditional, typical scrolls were generally written horizontally (whether right to left as in Hebrew or left to right as in Latin) and broken up into "pages" such that you scrolled through the pages. The Exultet rolls, however, were written top to bottom and contained text, musical notation and magnificent illustrations. The illustrations were upside down with respect to the text so that they could be viewed properly by observers as the scroll unrolled from the ambo, an elevated lecturn, before them, while, at the same time, the deacon could view text and music properly from his side. *note 2 The scrolls could be as wide as 80 cm (c. 2.5 feet) and stitched together to make them as long as 9 meters (c. 27 feet). The scrolls were a way of including the congregation in the service: the deacon would hold forth with the lengthy Excultet proclamation and at the same time unscroll the roll so that the illustrations gradually came into view before the congregation as he spoke. (It was an early version of a slide-show! The very young may wish think of this as a Power Point presentation from someone with real power.) It does bear emphasis, however, that the use of a scroll for the service was not merely and perhaps not even primarily a practical device. It lent solemnity and magnificence to the occasion. The intoned Exultet text, itself, started (in Latin, obviously): Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels! Exult, all creation around God's throne Jesus Christ, our king, is risen! Sound the trumpet of Salvation! " La Terra [the Earth], from an Exultet roll produced in the town of Troia. Note (from the indentations in the text) that the text is upside down in relation to the illustration. There then followed an extensive retelling not just of the life of Christ but of the world since Creation with appropriate illustrations on the scroll for various episodes, including Adam and Eve, the Flight from Egypt, the Crossing of the Red Sea, the Pillar of Fire, the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, Christ's descent into Hell, the Resurrected Christ, the Offering of the Candle, even the Praise of the Bees who provided wax to make the candle. Illustrations and text also praised the Church or the Pope, and the Emperor or King. In that regard, the scrolls underwent changes form the 10th to the 12th century that reflected social changes. There were two texts: Beneventan and Franco-Roman. Benevento was one of the great centers of Lombard culture in Italy; the Beneventan text is the older of the two and probably goes back to the eighth century. The later Franco-Roman text gradually replaced the earlier Beneventan one in the course of the 11th century as the authority of the Papacy grew in the south and Lombard power declined. As noted, the reading of the Exultet had a secular as well as religious function or, better, it fused the two by praising not just Church and Pope but also kings and emperors, past and present. The scrolls (seen even in the single image above) have ornamental strips running on both sides of the text and illustrations. These strips contain a great number of miniature portraits. Scholars debate whether they were meant to represent real persons or whether they were "generic portraiture," that is, tributes to whoever happened to be king or emperor at the time and whose name would then be inserted between lines of nearby text to remind the deacon what name to praise. (Indeed, there are numerous palimpsest patches on the scrolls where such interlinear names have been scratched away and other names written over. The scholarly consensus seems to be that of Ladner: though some of the religious portraits, say, of a Pope, may be an attempt at an accurate rendering, the portraits of the kings and princes of the earth are generally "stereotyped communication-pictures without the intention of portrayal." The production of the Exultet scrolls started in Benevento and spread to other places throughout southern Italy, such as Bari, Gaeta, Capua, Troia and Salerno. There are extant fragments of scrolls in various museums and libraries in Italy, including the Vatican Library and the Diocese Museum of Salerno. These scrolls continue to be of great interest to students of medieval art, liturgy, and music. *note 1: Ladner also notes the relatively late use of scrolls in places other than southern Italy for uses other than the Exultet: "Rolls instead of books have also been used for a fourteenth-century religious poem in Middle English, called Arma Christi or The Arms of the Passion (cf. R.H. Robbins, The Modern Language Review, XXXIV [1939], 415 ff.). These rolls like the Exultet rolls are illustrated and were meant to be read publicly, but otherwise there seems to be no connetction with the Exultet rolls." ^back to text *note 2: There are also examples of Exultet scrolls in which the text and illustrations run in the same orientation/direction. It is not clear at least to me from sources, but it seems to me that the deacon, the person reciting the Excultet, must then have stood below the ambo with the viewers such that they were all looking at the same thing from the same vantage point while the scroll was unrolled from above by an assistant.^back to text additional note on music: As a point of clarification, when we say that the scrolls contained text and music, the musical notation was in the form of "neumes," the forerunner of modern musical 5 line staff notation. Neumes generally did not indicate exact pitch but, rather, were markings above the text to remind the singer which direction the melody was to move and indicate something about the rhythm or how long to hold out a note. Neumes were a mnemonic device to help someone who already knew the melody. In the illustration above, the faint interlinear markings are the neumes. ^back to text sources: Cavallo, Guglielmo. Exultet, rotoli liturgici del medioevo meridionale, IPZS, Rome, 1994. di Frusca, Chiara. "Cultura libraria in una Societa Multiculturale: l'Italia Meridionale nei secoli XI XIII" in Le Mille e una Cultura, Scrittura e libri fra Oriente e Occidenta. Centro Universitario europeo per i beni culturali, Ravello, EDIPUGLIA. Bari, 2007. Kelley, Thomas F. The Exultet in Southern Italy. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996. Ladner, Gerard B. "The 'Portraits' of Emperors in Southern Italian Exultet Rolls and the Liturgical Commemoration of the Emperor" in Speculum, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Apr., 1942), pp. 181-200. Ladner cites extensively, and praises, an earlier work by Myrtilla Avery, Exultet Rolls of South Italy. Princeton University Press. Princeton, London, The Hague, 1936. Close The Duomo, the cathedral of Naples, is dedicated to San Gennaro, Saint Januarius, the patron saint of the city. It was built at the end of the 13th century at the decree of Charles I of Angio near the basilica of Santa Restituta (of which more, below), a sixth-century church that was incorporated into the Gothic architecture of the later cathedral, itself. The cathedral has been restored numerous times over the centuries. It was redone after the earthquake of 1788 and again in 1887. Its marble portals, however, are original. Inside, the cathedral is 100 meters long and in the form of a Latin Cross, with three naves, divided by sixteen pillars that form Gothic arches and incorporate 110 granite columns. The ceiling of the central nave is of wood and bears five paintings by various artists: the Annunciation, the Presentation at the Temple, the Visitation, the Nativity and the Epiphany. High on the Walls of the central nave and the transept are paintings of saints done by Luca Giordano and his school; at the base of the pillars are busts of the first 16 bishops of the city of Naples. Above the door of the main entrance are monuments to Charles I of Angio (d.1285) in the center; Charles Martel, King of Hungary (d.1295) on the right; and his wife, Clemenza of Hapsburg (d.1295) on the left. These monuments are the work of Domenico Fontana; viceroy Enrico Guzman Count of Olivares ordered them built in 1599 because the original tombs of those nobles had been destroyed. The side chapels are all quite interesting, containing a collection of funerary items, sculpture, frescoes and canvases that represent an exhaustive overview of figurative art from 1200 to 1700. In the nave, the fourth chapel is the Brancaccio chapel; just beyond that you enter into the oldest part of the Cathedral, the Santa Restituta basilica, one of the most interesting examples of paleo-Christian Naples. Originally, it was a church in its own right, built in the 6th century. Its present three aisles divided by 27 antique columns are what is left of the original church after it was incorporated into the body of the massive new cathedral in the 13th century. They say that Santa Restituta was a young African woman, who, because she was a Christian, was abandoned to the sea on a boat set ablaze. The fire, however, died out and she was miraculously able to put ashore on the island of Ischia. In the eighth century her remains were brought to the church in Naples that then took her name. The baptistery of San Giovanni in fonte beneath Santa Restituta claims to be the oldest in Western Christendom and contains a number of mosaics of extreme interest. (See this link for a graphic display of the mosaics.) In the nave, the fourth chapel is the Brancaccio chapel; just beyond that you enter into the oldest part of the Cathedral, the Santa Restituta basilica, one of the most interesting examples of paleo Christian Naples. Originally, it was a church in its own right, built in the 6th century. Its present three aisles divided by 27 antique columns are what is left of the original church after it was incorporated into the body of the massive new cathedral in the 13th century. They say that Santa Restituta was a young African woman, who, because she was a Christian, was abandoned to the sea on a boat set ablaze. The fire, however, died out and she was miraculously able to put ashore on the island of Ischia. In the eighth century her remains were brought to the church in Naples that then took her name. The baptistery of San Giovanni in fonte beneath Santa Restituta claims to be the oldest in Western Christendom and contains a number of mosaics of extreme interest. (See this link for a graphic display of the mosaics.) Opposite the Gothic Santa Restituta is the Baroque chapel of San Gennaro del Tesoro, built between 1608 and 1637 to fulfill the vow made by the people of Naples on January 13, 1527, after a plague. The bust of Januarius is precious. It is of silver, done by French craftsmen and is a gift of Charles III of Angio. It preserves part of the saint's skull as well as the vial of blood that is believed by the faithful to liquefy miraculously twice a year. This occurs in May and September, repeating the miracle that happened for the first time during the reign of the Emperor Constantine, when the remains of Januarius were moved to Naples from Pozzuoli, the site of his martyrdom on September 19, 305. The expectation by the populace of the yearly occurrence of the "Miracle of San Gennaro" remains one the most fascinating manifestations of faith in all of Christendom. Archaeological work done around the the Duomo since the 1960s has brought to light a number of Greek, Roman and medieval items of interest. Traces of four 'city blocks' have been found, formed by the intersecting upper and central decumani (the east-west streets of Greek Neapolis) and the stenopoi, or north-south cross-streets. A small temple has been uncovered on the ancient stenopoi corresponding to modern-day via Duomo. The blocks around the Cathedral were clearly incorporated into later Roman Imperial road-work within the city. With the coming of Christianity, a number of Christian churches started to appear in the area, but many of the smaller ones from before the turn of the millennium were torn down to make way for the Cathedral. Close There are many tombs, crypts and catacombs from ancient times in Naples. Such repositories of intact human remains may give the impression that cremation was not practiced at the time of the Greeks and Romans. That is not the case. Cremation in the days of ancient Greece and Rome was common and did not fall out of favor in Italy and elsewhere in Europe until well into the Christian era. In ancient Rome, both burial and cremation were common, and the choice was apparently a social one; the upper classes preferred cremation. [Related entry here.] Cremated remains were stored in cinerary urns; these in turn were placed in a columbarium, a sepulchre having in its walls niches to hold the urns. Columbaria could be both below and above ground, or even have both an underground and a surface part. The name "columbarium" comes from the Latin word for "pigeon" since the structures, indeed, looked like dovecots, even down to the "pigeon holes" for the urns. A mausoleum, on the other hand, is an above-ground edifice built as a memorial to the deceased and containing the remains in whatever form cremated, skeletal, mummified, etc. The word mausoleum comes from the grand tomb of Mausolus of Caria (a satrapy of ancient Persia); it was erected by his queen Aremesia in the middle of the 4th c. BC at Halicarnassus (the site of modern day Bodrum in Turkey) and became known as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I have seen the Fescina (photo, above) called both a columbarium and a mausoleum. Dated to the 1st c. BC, it is a free standing column topped by a pyramid-like hexagonal cusp; it is located in the necropolis of via Brindisi in the town of Quarto, near Naples. This type of architecture is particular; the Fescina is the only example of it in the Campi Flegrei or the entire Campania region of Italy, at the very least. This kind of structure was, however, widespread in the Hellenic Age in the eastern Mediterranean, which has led to some speculation that the family that built this one was from Asia Minor. (There are a few other pyramid mausoleums in Italy, most notably the tomb of Gaius Cestius in Rome, built in c.15 BC. That one is large 37 meters high and is a true pyramid; it was almost certainly modeled on Egyptian pyramid tombs during the so-called "Cleopatra craze" in ancient Rome. It seems to have little in common with the Fescina. I am tempted to say that the Fescina may be unique in all of Italy, but I would be happy for some clarification.) The term fescina* is from the local vocabulary of the grape harvest and is a nickname hung on the monument by farmers in the area who noticed its similarity to the conical basket (photo, right), the fescina, carried by those picking grapes from ladders along the higher vines in a vineyard. In any event, it is built in opus reticulatum* brick-work and has two floors, one of which is underground and the plastered walls of which contain eleven niches for the cremation urns. There are also three reclining couch-beds known as triclinia; they are of brick and were intended for ritual banquets. Two slit openings higher up allowed light and air to enter. The part visible above ground appears to be about 6 7 meters high. The area was excavated in the 1970s and 80s. The Fescina was part of a larger Necropolis. [update: Nov. 2012] A local archeology group has cleaned up the site such that it is now visible and visitable.] *Opus reticulatum: Roman brick work that placed the pointed ends of diamond-shaped bricks into cement such that the square bases formed a diagonal pattern on the surface of a wall. The pattern of mortar lines resembled a net or reticulatum in Latin. fescina etymology: The word is a dialect variation of fascina (accent on the second syllable). The English term is "fascine" i.e., a cylindrical faggot of brush or small wood, bound together and used in construction for such things as filling in ditches. It is a cognate of fascio, a bundle or sheaf of grain, which then became a political symbol and has given us the term Fascism. photos: top photo of the fescina from Museo Diffuso, provincia di Napoli. basket photo from S. Salvi, Napoli Underground. Close form large surfaces at the NW, NE, SW and SE points. These are quite large (photo, right, below) and are, in fact, entrances to the offices on the upper floors of the Gallery. Entrances are from all ends of the cross. The main entrance is from the south, directly across from the San Carlo theater, (the large building at the bottom in this image). (That entrance is seen in the photo at left, directly below, left.) The street running up on the left is via Toledo (alias via Roma); the street along the north (top) side of the block is via Santa Brigida; the street running down the right is via Giuseppe Verdi. The first architectural results of the industrial revolution sprang up in Britain in the middle of the 19th century: Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace in 1851, for example, and The Oxford Museum (1859) by Deane and Woodward. By using iron, these architects sought to reconcile the split in the Victorian personality, which viewed such industrial material as the substance of engines to power modern society with, perhaps, but hardly the stuff of Architecture with a capital A—the discipline of designing museums, hotels, universities and other such places for the genteel to gather. Such use of glass and iron, however, was to revolutionize architecture and eventually lead to the first steel-framed skyscrapers of the Chicago architects before the century was out. High vaulted glass and iron domes, governed by their own new architectural aesthetics, characterized a number of structures built in Europe in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The most prominent example in Naples is the Galleria Umberto I, across from San Carlo Theater. It was inaugurated in 1890, and named for Umberto I, who was king of Italy from 1878 until 1900 when he died at the hands of an assassin [see this entry on an earlier attempted assassination of Umberto]. (There is a slightly earlier, smaller example of the same type of architecture in Naples, the Galleria Principe di Napoli.) The idea behind the Risanamento ('resanitizing' or 'making healthy again') of Naples in the 1880s and 90s was to clear large sections of the city that for centuries had been nests of squalid overcrowding and disease; then rational construction could take place. The wide boulevard known as Corso Umberto (or the Rettifilo, the 'straight line') running from Piazza della Borsa all the way to the main train station at Piazza Garibaldi was one result of this effort, as was the construction of a new seaside road and 20 blocks of new buildings at Santa Lucia. The Galleria Umberto was another. There was a need to renew the area across from San Carlo known as Santa Brigida, and four designs were submitted. One by Emanuele Rocco (1852-1922) was chosen. His plan left in place a number of historic buildings that others would have torn down, yet presented a high and spacious cross-shaped mall, a truly cathedralesque affair surmounted by a great glass dome braced by 16 metal ribs. Of the four glass-vaulted wings, one fronts on via Toledo (via Roma), still the main downtown thoroughfare, and another opens onto the San Carlo Theater, framed like a splendid proscenium by the portals of the gallery (photo, below). The Galleria Umberto was based on the design of the gallery in Milan completed in 1865; yet, it was a more aesthetic fusion of the industrial glass and metal of the upper part and the masonry below, which, itself, is a spectacular collage of Renaissance and Baroque ornamentation, tapering off to clean smoothness of marble at the ground concourse. Other architects involved were Ernesto Mauro and Antonio Curri, the latter being primarily behind the intensely ornate decorative and symbolic designs that cover surfaces in the Galleria. (He also worked on restoring the interior of the San Carlo theater as well as the delightful interior of the nearby Gambrinus Caffè.) The Gallery was built to stimulate commerce and to be a symbol of a city reborn. It still contains numerous cafès, businesses, book and record shops, and fashionable stores. Once it held theaters and restaurants as well, and was, indeed, the sitting room of bourgeois Naples. (One such theater was the fabled Salone Margherita, home of the local version of the café-chantant. It was below the main concourse with a stairway leading down to it and a separate entrance from street-level outside. It was closed for many years and is currently being rebuilt.) The fate of the Galleria Umberto has come to be somewhat of a metaphor of Naples, meaning that there are good times and bad, periods of splendor as well as decay. Among its many ups and downs is even the fact that it was the target of aerial bombardment by a dirigible in the First World War! These days, you can still —and should still— marvel at the architecture, its deceptive orderliness as it moves and shifts like Proteus from one detail to the next. Yet, the Galleria also lets you become for a moment the center of an equally fascinating bit of flesh-and-blood architecture: a true human kaleidoscope swirls around you, on the way to the opera, to work, to a rendezvous. Perhaps they are well-dressed, perhaps disheveled; the weird as well as the mundane, the casual and the poised. From the perfectly nondescript to those who look like extras in some bizarre film, they all have their own reasons for being drawn to what is still a most remarkable structure. (update from June 2015) precisely the question a woman asked whom I was leading though the Gallery. In the Gallery Umberto, as noted in the box at the top of this page, the four sections of the cross come in from the four cardinal points, N, S, E W, stopping well short of the center and allowing for large surfaces at the intermediate points; these are, in fact, entrances to the upper floors of the gallery by internal stairways and elevators. There are thus four such entrances in the Gallery, each topped by a semicircular framework of glass called—I think, but am not sure—a lunette, a typanum, a half-moon window, or, my personal favorite, a semicircular framework of glass! They are identical; one of them is seen in the image, above. They are all decorated identically with what my guest referred to as "Stars of David"—a single large six-pointed star—a hexagram—at the top and two sets of five smaller similar stars arrayed along the bottom, separated by three empty panes. Capernaum photo by courtesy of W. Johnson Strictly speaking, however, in this case they are not Stars of David. Well, wait—back up. "In this case" is important, since obviously they ARE Stars of David—that is, the hexagram, the six-pointed star. That symbol has been a symbol of Judaism at least since the Middle Ages; it has a much older history as a decorative or ornamental design in Jewish archaeology in the Middle East (and possibly a religious symbol, though that is disputed).* There are, in any event, such designs or symbols on very old synagogues in the Middle East —in Capernaum, for example, (photo, left). The hexagram has also been used in religious and cultural contexts other than Judaism. Today, the symbol is indelibly linked to Judaism in the perceptions of both Jews and non-Jews; it was adopted as the symbol of the Zionist movement in 1897 as well as by the state of Israel in 1948 for their new national flag. (It bears noting that the traditional "co-symbol" of Judaism has been the menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum used in the temple; it is at least as strong a symbol of the Jewish faith as the Star of David.) to "...though that is disputed." the Jewish Virtual Library says "The Magen David (shield of David, or as it is more commonly known, the Star of David) is the symbol most commonly associated with Judaism today, but it is actually a relatively new Jewish symbol....there is really no support for the claim in any early rabbinic literature. In fact, the symbol is so rare in early Jewish literature and artwork that art dealers suspect forgery if they find the symbol in early works. " Italy, that connection between the six-pointed star and Judaism was not particularly part of the non-Jewish perception among the populace. (The Jewish population of Naples numbered fewer than 1000 persons at the time.) Rather, the hexagrams are masonic symbols. This makes sense when you consider that the Gallery Umberto, from the outset in 1890, housed (at #27 in the Galleria) the Neapolitan center of the Grande Oriente d'Italia, one of the largest and most significant masonic organizations in Italy, founded in 1805 and counting among its 19th-century members the likes of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Alessandro Manzoni and Giosuè Carducci. It is still the largest masonic organization in Italy and still in the Galleria Umberto. I am not concerned with the nature of freemasonry—what it is, what it isn't. I am content to believe in their published accounts of support for hospitals and schools and less inclined to believe that they are ensconced in a mountain retreat planning to take over the world—or, in the words of my dear friend, Peter, they are "hardly the Bilderburger Trilateral Commission conspirators so often depicted." I admit that I don't see the necessity of symbols, but maybe that's just me. The eclectic masonic use of symbols is well-known. My light-hearted layman's point of view is that if you are going to lay claim to some sort of genealogy of knowledge, that is, a connection to esoteric secrets that run back through the centuries, even millennia —knowledge that might serve us well today— then you pretty much need all the symbols you can find: 6-pointed stars, 5-pointed stars (the Gallery in Milan, very similar to the one in Naples, is ornamented with 8-pointed stars) pyramids, upside-down pyramids, circles, squares, crosses, all-seeing eyes, pentagons, eagles, anchors, harps and tesseracts. On the right is a photo of a masonic ritual where the standard masonic symbols of the square and compass (representing the Grand Architect of the Universe, as the masons put it) are next to a menorah! My friend, Warren, interprets this as a symbol of "I believe in something," and that is fine with me. (Note, too, that in the large photo, above, there is also a display of five-pointed stars, the pentagram, running around the metal base of the dome. That is also a common masonic symbol.) So, they're not Stars of David up there. Well, wait —back up again. Can you deal with their presence in the same way as the juxtaposed square, compass and menorah" That is, might it be some sort of an all-encompassing all-welcoming way of saying "I believe in this, too! I believe in something." Maybe. (Thanks to Warren Johnson, Peter Humphrey and Selene Salve for their comments.) to portal for architecture and urban planning The horses in Naples are reared up; they look wild and as yet untamed, while the horse tamers, themselves, are as naked as the horses. It all looks savage and somewhat un Italian,lets say Russian and steppe-like at least compared to other stately and totally tamed equestrian statues in the city (the two mounted versions of Charles III and his son, Ferdinand I in the square on the west side of the same royal palace, for example.) But the inspiration is very classical; the statues are variations of the colossal Roman marbles of Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins, posed with their steeds at the fountain on the Quirinal Hill in Rome. The Horse Tamers in Naples were cleaned and restored in 2002 (which, incidentally, is the last time I have seen that particular entrance to the gardens open). There was a reason for the good relations between Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Naples in the 1840s that impelled the czar to give away two of his prize monuments. Czar Nicolas grandfather, Czar Paul I, had signed Russia up in the so-called Second Coalition (formed in 1798) against the forces of Republican France. The other members of the Coalition were Great Britain, Austria, Portugal, Naples and, surprisingly, Turkey (the Ottoman Empire). For a while, then, the Russian and Turks put aside their centuries of dispute to make common cause against the French. A joint Russo-Turkish fleet joined the forces of Admiral Nelson in the southern Mediterranean. The immediate goal was to dislodge the French-supported Neapolitan Republic (proclaimed in January, 1799) and reinstall the Bourbon monarchy to the throne of Naples. A body of five- or six-hundred Russians and Turks landed on the Adriatic coast, having crossed from Corfu, to assist the Royalist forces under Ruffo in retaking the kingdom. They were successful, and the Russian and Turkish commanders both signed the armistice agreement by which the Bourbons (in this case, King Ferdinand I) were restored in Naples. One grandfather had helped another, and both grandsons were now still absolute monarchs, still resisting the gathering forces of reform at mid-century. That is worth a couple of statues. This is a 19th-century lithograph of the Anichkov Bridge in St. Petersburg showing the four horses.The artist and lithographer was oseph-Maria Charlemagne-Baudet) (1824-1870), a Russian and known there as Iosif Iosifovich Charlemagne. Close In his Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) devoted an entire tale (Second Day, Tale Four) to the adventures of one Landolfo Rufolo, a contemporary of his from the town of Ravello on the "delightful...slope of Amalfi." Rufolo was rich but wanted more; thus, he set off to seek his further fortune, became a pirate, went down at sea, was rescued and eventually found his way home to Ravello again where he built his villa on a spectacular slope overlooking the sea. He then "lived in honorable estate" until his death. Poster of first Wagner Festival, 1953As if from Snoopy's Dark-and-Stormy-Night school of great coincidences, just a few years earlier (c. 1200) in far-off Germany, Wolfram von Eschenbach had written his Parsifal, which, centuries later, would inspire Richard Wagner's (1813-83) last work, a tale involving the evil sorcerer, Klingsor and an enchanted garden. Wagner visited the Villa Rufolo in 1880 and was so inspired by the beauty of the garden that he declared, "Here is the enchanted garden of Klingsor." Did Eschenbach know Boccaccio? And what were Mommy and Daddy von Eschenbach thinking when they named their kid "Wolfram," a word that means "tungsten" in German? And how would young Tungsten have rated Wagner? (answer: "Really loud. Say, do you guys know anything by Hildegard von Bingen?") And why is "Parsifal" a pseudo-anagram for "Laugh His Rap"? Alas, we may never know the answer to some of these questions, but see how it all ties together? Wagner apparently rode up to the Villa Rufolo from Amalfi on a mule. (What did mules ever do to God?!) Wagner was a notorious deadbeat and left an unpaid tab at the Palumbo Hotel, but, as it turned out (70 years later), more than made up for it by transforming the villa and all of Ravello into a money magnet. Ravello held its first Wagner music festival in 1953. The yearly affair has since grown in scope and continues to attract hordes of music lovers and performers of world renown every year. The gardens that so moved Wagner were actually the result of a renovation of the villa in 1851 when Francis Neville Reid,* a Scottish botanist, bought the property and went crazy with the plant life. The restoration of the villa, itself, was in the hands of Michele Ruggiero, a gentleman who then took over the excavations at Pompeii. Significant parts of the original villa are still intact, including the main tower and intriguing Norman-Arab columns (photo, right) along a passageway through the villa and to the back of the property where the outdoor concerts are held. The stage is set up at 1000 feet over the slope and sea looking due east along the folds of the mountain range of the Amalfi coast. The view is stunning. This year's festival started July 3 and will run through September 17; it has "sections" for orchestral, chamber, and film music, visual arts, experimental theater, and discussions on education. I went for the orchestral music-specifically, Wagner, because that is why one goes to Ravello. We heard the Orchestra and Choir of the Marinsky Theater from St. Petersburg. It wasn't all Wagner, but it was close enough and included, on two successive evenings, a prelude from Parsifal, the funeral march from The Twilight of the Gods, the overtures to Tannhauser and The Flying Dutchman, and the introduction to the third act of Lohengrin. One non-Wagner item was Prokovief's great score to the Eisenstein film, Alexander Nevsky. I recall noting that there were two bass trombonists in the Parsifal excerpt, thus giving the collective low brass section the most lethal attack of decibels since the eruption of Krakatoa. It was fine! *Obituary notice of Neville Reid from The Times, July 21, 1892. Francis Nevile Reid, who died at Ravello on the 12 inst. at the age of 66, will be greatly missed and sincerely mourned throughout the beautiful region of southern Italy where he had lived for something like 40 years. A member of a wealthy Scottish family, he suffered, as a very young man from delicacy of the chest; and as, during a journey in Italy, he found great good from the air of Ravello, above Amalfi, he bought land there, and the half ruined Palazzo of the once famous Rufoli family, and there he henceforth made his home. In those days the hill country of the kingdom of Naples was about the most backward and barbarous part of Italy; and Mr. Reid set himself to introduce some kind of civilization into his commune and neighbourhood. He made the Palazzo habitable, while preserving its ancient features with loving care; he gave employment to the underfed and underpaid people; he gradually organized a decent municipality; and, in the end, a few years ago, he succeeded in getting the excellent carriage road made to Amalfi, thus opening up the district and immensely increasing its chance of prosperity. Many were the difficulties that he had to overcome, especially from the small bourgoizie, who complained that he raised the rate of wages that they had to pay; and on one occasion, a few years ago, the ghastly murder of a local friend and partisan of his, in a quarrel arising out of this partisanship, reminded him of the real savagery that still remained among the people of Ravello. More than once, in the old days, he had a narrow escape from the brigands, who, in the last years of Bomba and after his overthrow, infested the mountains of the Surrentine peninsular. Once, as Mr. Reid, his wife, and her mother were about to sit down to dinner, the village cobbler ran in to tell them that 70 of these scoundrels were assembling in the Piazza, and that he would be seized in ten minutes. He and the ladies just succeeded in slipping away down a narrow path to Minori, the little seaport 1,000ft. below. where they took boat for Capri, staying there till order was restored. General Pallavicini swept the mountains clear of brigands, and since that time Mr. Reid has been able to live and carry on his career of quiet beneficence undisturbed. It is hard to estimate what a loss his death will cause throughout that lovely but very poor region, to which, for a generation or more, he has literally been a Providence. His heir is his nephew, the son of Sir James Lacaita. (Also see Ravello 2008 and 2014) Close numbered items about the life and career of Antonio De Curtis (name in art, Totò) appeared on the dates indicated in the original version of the Around Naples Encyclopedia and have been consolidated here onto a single page. They include the main entry, first, and then entries on two films in which he appeared prominently; finally, there are entries on the Totò Museum and Totò Theater extracted from the Miscellany pages. It is proverbial that there is something universal about humor, yet, nothing translates with more difficulty from one culture to another than film comedy. Great exceptions, such as Chaplin and Laurel Hardy, though they may have wound up making talkies, more or less depended on their genius for visual humor, and slapstick developed in an age when humor was silent. Once films started to speak, the rules changed, which is why highly verbal comics such as Groucho Marx are so difficult to render into another language. A pie in the face, a prat fall, or a piano falling downstairs cross cultural and language barriers much easier than trying to translate, "Bernstein is out in the corridor waxing wroth!" "Yeah? Well, tell him to get in here and let Roth wax himself for a while!" The Neapolitan comic Antonio De Curtis, known as Totò, is another example of humor that can be appreciated across cultures. True, he is often full of the verbal dexterity that only native speakers of Italian can appreciate, yet his flights of outrageous language are so often combined with pure visual humor that he is easily one of the most accessible of all film comics, language and culture notwithstanding. Nothing will start a marathon session of tale-swapping quicker than Neapolitans sitting around recalling scenes from their favorite Totò films. If you want one where the pompous get their comeuppance, there's the train scene where he offers to help a windbag senator with his luggage, taking each piece and carefully passing it out the window of the moving train, and for sheer pantomimic grace, only Chaplin at his best can compare with Totò's version of a marionette puppet dancing his way across the stage to the strains of the Parade of the Wooden Soldiers. This memorial is at Totò's birthplace in the Vergini section of Naples. His early career started after WW I in vaudeville and expanded into films. He made 85 of them in all. Some of them, of course, are silly potboilers, fun but forgettable. Others are "art," the kind you wind up admiring, but still puzzling over and studying in History of Cinema classes, such as his brilliant work in Uccellacci ed uccellini (1966) (lit. "Ugly birds and little birds." English title is "The Hawks and the Sparrows."), produced by another genius, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Others, the most memorable ones, have him in the role of the true clown, the little man down on his luck, just trying to make it through another day. There is this poignancy in Guardie e Ladri (Cops and Robbers). Totò, as a petty thief, spends much of the film making a good-natured overweight policeman chase after him. They become friends and though Totò has to go off to jail, the policeman winds up promising to send postcards to his family from different places around Italy so they'll think Totò is just off on a business trip. Then, there is some of Everyman's would-be defiance of Authority in a film called i Due Marascialli, when a high-ranking Nazi officer in WW II Italy screams at Totò: "I can do what I want. I have a blank check!" "A blank check?" answers Totò, in a retort now proverbial in Italian, "Well, you can wipe your ass with it!" A number of other Totòisms have found their way into the language. "Siamo uomini o caporali?!" ("Are we men or corporals?") and the immortal, but untranslatable line (because it contains a grammatical error which contradicts the spirit of the sentence): "Signore si nasce ed io lo nacqui!" (Maybe something like, "Gentlemen are born, not made, and I is one!") He was also the author of a number of well-loved poems and songs in Neapolitan dialect, most memorable of which are A' livella (a poem about death as the great equalizer) and "Malafemmina," a love song. Like many comics, Totò did not become appreciated as a "true clown" until after his death. But most Italians knew right from the start what it took critics decades to figure out, and now through the pleasant little time-machine known as television, we can all see why. The title has to do with the smorfia, the tradition of interpreting dreams, of associating numbers with certain things in dreams and then playing those numbers in the lottery. The presumption is that someone on "the other side" is giving you a hot tip. Number 47 in the Smorfia is Dead Man Talking, so if you have a dream in which you are conversing with, say, one of your dearly departed, 47 is one number you should play. Unfortunately, you need at least three "hits" to have any chance of making real money. That's three friends in very high places—perhaps too much to ask in any one week. The film was made in 1950 and is a loose adaptation of a stage comedy of the same name by Roman playwright, Ettore Petrolini (1886-1936) with some of Moliere's The Miser thrown in. The whole plot revolves around getting a skinflint Baron, played by Totò, to reveal where he keeps a large stash of money. The conspirators figure that the best way to do this is to make Totò believe he is dead, have him wake up in the afterlife, and then get him to talk about what he did in life and where he hid things such as money. They drug him and cart him away to a Stygian landscape replete with fumaroles and other Dantean special effects; when he comes to his senses, those who were his friends in life are standing around in bed sheets and laurel wreaths, moaning and otherwise impersonating characters whom you might expect to meet in the doom and gloom antechamber of the hereafter. I won't spoil the rest of the film for you, but I remember being taken with the set for the scene where he wakes up: barren hillside, lots of rocks, smoke and steam. It turns out that it was filmed on location in Naples—right outside of Naples, really, in the Solfatara, a very active and bubbling sulfur pit. It is located in the area known as the Campi Flegrei. Indeed, Petronius, in The Satyricon reminds us… locus exciso penitus demersus hiatu Parthenopen Neapolis and the vast fields of Dicearchia [modern–day Pozzuoli] there is a place at the bottom of a cavern washed by the waters of the Cocytus*... [*One of the four mythological rivers of the netherworld, on the shores of which wandered the souls of those who had known no proper burial at death.] Strabo (66 B.C. -24 A.D.) also mentions the Solfatara in his Strabonis geographica, calling it Forum Vulcani, the abode of the god, Vulcan, and the entrance to Hades. The Solfatara is, at present, a protected nature reserve open to tourism. It is, indeed, at the "bottom of a cavern"—a large crater of volcanic origin and one that is still very active, geologically. In its long history, the Solfatara has suffered from benign neglect as well as commercial exploitation, having been mined for is alum and chalk as well as serving as a source for mineral water with reputed medicinal value. Its value as a scientific station for the study of the geologically very interesting activity in the area started in 1861 when the property was purchased by the De Luca family, which included Francesco De Luca, a physicist. His scientific descriptions of the area, the mineral content of the soil and waters, etc. are still informative reading. The area was officially opened to visitors in 1900 but had long been—bound as it is to Greek and Roman Mythology—a stop on the so-called "Grand Tour". There have been a number of recent documentaries on Italian national TV about the Solfatara. They refer to the site as an "active volcano" and have used it—with nearby Vesuvius, of course—as a point of departure to discuss the geology of the entire Bay of Naples. photo directly above by Napoli Underground (NUg) Marotta, G. (3) I have heard that the pazzariello still exists, but I have never seen one except in a period re-enactment of the Naples of days gone by. Indeed, in April 1997, RAI, the Italian state radio, ran a short program called "The Last Pazzariello of Naples" in which they went to a hospital in the Spanish Quarters and talked to Michele Lauri, born in 1920, the gentleman purported to be the last of his kind except, as I say, in re-enactments. "Don Michele" said he had plied his trade from the end of WWII until the late 1980s—50 years of being a pazzariello, then, eventually, the last one in Naples. For many centuries, before mass printing and then electronics made it so much easier to spread the word, there was a profession called "town crier" or some variation thereof—a person paid to walk around and shout out the news of the day and also get in a few ads for local merchants. The pazzariello was that person in Naples. Typically, he dressed in mock military garb—a homemade uniform with bizarre medals, epaulets and a diagonal sash across the chest. He wore a fancy French Bourbon tricorner hat, usually with the points at front and back instead of on the side and carried a large baton. He looked perhaps more like a circus ringmaster than a general, but at least it was conspicuous. The pazzariello (from the Neapolitan verb pazziare—to joke) was usually accompanied by a small band of at least a flautist and a bass-drum. He paraded around the streets and announced that a new shop was opening, or that this or that shop was almost giving away merchandise, so hurry, hurry, hurry—or that so-and-so had lost a wedding ring and would the finder please have it in his heart to return it. He told a few jokes, rhymed a few couplets, and there were also the obligatory bits of gossip and anti-establishment comments. He and his small entourage picked up the few coins that people tossed their way. If the pazzariello is familiar at all to those outside of Italy, it is probably through the 1954 film, L'oro di Napoli (The Gold of Naples), directed by Vittorio De Sica (1901-74). The film consists of five episodes (six in the US release) based on those found in the 1947 book of the same name by Giuseppe Marotta (1902-1963). The first episode in the film (il guappo—the Racketeer) revolves around the character of a pazzariello, played by Totò (photo, above). (Don Michele, the real deal, had a bit part in the film and was a technical adviser.) Totò's performance is uncharacteristically dark and melancholy and the episode has been called by one critic the last bit of true "neorealism" to come from De Sica (the director of Bicycle Thieves and Umberto [Click here for an item about another story in the book, The Gold of Naples, an episode that was not in the film. Also here for an episode from both book and film.] from Miscellany pages: —The Neapolitan comic, Antonio De Curtis (in art known as “Totò”), was the most popular Italian film comic of the 20th century. (“No one is in second place,” as they say.) A number of complaints in the paper have noted that the city can’t seem to get its own unfunny act together enough to buy the comic’s home on Via Santa Maria Antesaecula, a site where they could open a decent museum dedicated to Naples’ “favorite son.” The house has been up for sale a number of times and the city has done nothing. added, August 2011 The Totò Theater is alive and well. It opened in May, 1996, on the premises of—and after totally refurbishing—the old Ausonia cinema, (perhaps putting the brakes on the distressing cultural trend in the other direction, whereby live theaters become movie-houses). The establishment bills itself as the "comic theater of Naples" and has had successful seasons since its inception. The 631-seat theater is on the south-side of the Botanical Gardens, a few minutes' walk from a street named after the great comic (via Antonio De Curtis) and also near the Vergini/Sanità area of Naples, where he was born. The season generally runs from October through May and features comic plays and musical comedy. The theater also sponsors theater workshops for younger actors just starting out. Also If you don't like zoos, I understand. The animals in zoo posters all look-well, not too unhappy about being in prison. The giraffes look sufficiently goofy, the tigers still look proud and menacing, and the elephants seem unperturbed. In real life, however, I still have to be convinced that wild animals should be contained in anything less than one of those wild animal safari parks, where there is at least the illusion of open space. If I hear that well-maintained zoos are one of the ways in which we help endangered species survive, then I guess I have to accept that. Grudgingly. And so I accept the newly reopened Naples zoo for what it seems to be: relatively small but well-designed and properly maintained. The recent history of the zoo in Naples has been a disaster. It was founded in 1940 on the premises of the gigantic Mostra d'oltremare-Overseas Fair Grounds-in the Fuorigrotta section of Naples, though it didn't begin regular operation until after WWII. Over the next few decades, it acquired some sort of a reputation as a decent zoological facility-or so they tell me-but the first time I visited it (in the 1970s) I didn't like it. As I say, some people don't like zoos at all. I never went back. In the 1990s, the zoo-financed and run by the city-started to decline badly. By 2002, animals were suffering (and dying) from neglect. Volunteers and unpaid staffers struggled to keep it open. (Private citizens were going to butcher shops, buying whatever they figured a lion might like and carrying it over to the zoo!) It was closed in 2003. I remember how good I felt for the animals that they were being shipped out to facilities elsewhere. The zoo has reopened recently under the private management of the owners of the adjacent amusement park, Edenlandia, so I took my second visit to the place the other day. The literature for the zoo guarantees that the animals are properly cared for, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that score. I didn't visit the whole place, but I saw a well-landscaped facility, an elephant, a few tigers, a camel, some flamingos, and even a small farm-animal petting enclosure for children. (The children seemed to like it and the goats didn't seem to mind.) There was even a row of smaller cages ("The way they used to pen up animals in zoos") for exhibit purposes only. (Maybe those are the ones I remember.) The new enclosures are much larger. If private management can make it a going concern and fulfill the plans to expand into the currently unused spaces of the east end of the Fair Grounds, then I'm satisfied. Not happy, but satisfied. There is still something not right about a tiger in a cage. The elephant I saw was leisurely tossing dust on herself (but, alas, item 5, below); the camel was just staring at the starers; but the tigers were pacing. That's what they do. Pace. The Naples Zoo- no. 2 - June, 2009 Sabrina, the 32-year-old female elephant-the only elephant left at the Naples zoo-is in danger of dying from an intestinal obstruction. Doctors from the university department of veterinary medicine and experts from as far away as Tel Aviv have converged on the zoo to see if they can save her. It is, according to reports, very iffy. The zoo, itself, though an immense improvement over what the place used to be, still needs to be restructured. Contsruction is supposed to start in September on a major expansion into the adjacent and largely unused area at the east end of the large fair grounds in Fuori Grotta, the Mostra d'Oltremare. The new entity will be called Animalia and will be on the order of those large safari parks where animals have more room to roam. [updaate #5, below] The Naples Zoo- no. 3 - Nov. 2012 (Nov. 8) Edenlandia Zoo bankrupt! I last looked in on the premises of these facilities five years ago and expressed cautious optimism. It now seems that both the large amusement park/fun fair, Edenlandia, and the nearby Naples Zoo are bankrupt and have been officially put on the international auction block. Both facilities had a long history of problems (see those links, above) when they were taken over in 2003 by the Park and Leisure Corporation, which tried to administer both as a single enterprise. For a while, it looked good, at least to me. The company, however, wound up 13 million euros in debt and was finally declared insolvent. A final disposition on how to deal with the crisis in case there are no takers to buy the premises (that also include the adjacent ex-dog-racing track) has been put off until February of next year. The area is at the west end of the large Mostra d'Oltremare in the suburb of Bagnoli and has always seemed the perfect place for facilities that serve the leisure time of citizens in a crowded city. Perfect places to take the kids. Lots of potential. We'll see. (update: here) The Naples Zoo-no. 4 - Jan. 2013 (Jan 24) Zoo emergency, again. The crisis has not been resolved, and the international press has reported that animals in the Naples zoo are days away from starvation. This means, of course, that a local paper ran a timely feature on it yesterday! I suspect that if past performance is any indicator, the city will find a band-aid solution to the problem. The last time this happened, 10 years ago, animals were fed by supplies from private citizens who carted food in. Some favor releasing the large carnivores into city hall while the city council is in session. Yummie. A modest proposal. A few days later. BUT! It now seems that Alfredo Villa, the Italian-Swiss owner of a company called Brainspark has agreed to buy the Zoo and Edenladia property and pump enough money into it to bring the whole leisure park back to life. What's more, say this morning papers, the jobs of the dozens of personnel connected with the facility will be saved. Everyone seems to be happy. I have heard this song dance before, so I am wary of running over there and giving the tiger in the above photo a big congratulatory hug. Stay tuned. The Naples Zoo- no. 5 - Oct 2014 (October 25) Wherever the mythical Elephant Graveyard is supposed to be, it now has another resident. Rest in peace. Sabrina, the icon of the Naples zoo, a 56-year-old female elephant, also noted five-years ago when she was merely ill, has died. Sabrina was the only elephant in the zoo. Not exactly solitary confinement, but for a social species such as the elephant, it probably comes close. She came to the zoo in 1986. Fifty-six is kind of middle-aged for an elephant; maybe she just got lonely. Or maybe it was the zoo. I have not been back there in a while because it was so depressing. Anyway, the last word to John Donne: "Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing." The Naples Zoo-no. 6 - Nov. 2015 (Nov 3) - Sabrina, thou shouldst be living at this hour! The last time I wrote about the Naples Zoo, it was on the death of Sabrina, the only elephant (the solitude alone is probably what killed her). My other entries on the zoo are on this page. They redepress me when I read them. Perhaps this time around, things are looking up, and it's about time.The Zoo website announces "Great Expectations lead to Grand Surpises" in the form of mother and daughter, Wini and Julia (48 and 23 years old, respectively), newly arrived from Copenhagen (at least it's warmer in Naples!). Their Danish keeper arrived with them, so as not to make the change too abrupt. They have a new elephant house, green grass, a huge water pool, trees to scratch on and about one acre to roam around in. It doesn't seem like much, but it is, after all, a zoo. This addition to the zoo comes through an organization known as EAZA (European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, founded in 1992), headquartered in Amsterdam. They say in their promo literature that "...zoos and aquaria have a strong role to play in protecting nature and wildlife both at our institutions and out...". That is shorthand for the plausible and unfortunate scenario that in a world intent on making wild animals extinct,* maybe the only way to shelter and protect them is in captivity. The organization is an umbrella for specialist groups such as the European Endangered Species Programs and various breeding programs. The Naples Zoo, in its literature, says that some of the facilities are not yet fully open because they are being restructured. Also, the former co-management scheme with the adjacent funfair/amusement park "Edenlandia" is still uncertain since that facility is still closed (it has announced that it will reopen in six months). What can I say? If they don't give these two beautiful creatures (whom John Donne called,"Nature's great masterpiece...the only harmless great thing") a fair deal, I am going to go down and release the kraken! (Actually, that thing, probably Architeuthis dux, lives at the Dohrn Aquarium in Naples, a facility in good standing of the EAZA! So be warned...) *(If you think that is an exaggeration, perhaps this external link will convince you.) The Naples Zoo- no. 7 - April 3 2016 (Apr 3) - Things seem to be looking up for the Naples zoo. As you may read on this page, the place has had a lot of downs, as well. But for now...the most recent addition is Lubango, a male giraffe, weighing in at 600 lean and cuddly kg/1300 pounds, but not nearly full-grown. His weight can expect to double and he'll reach a height of 5 meters. That's what eating 30 kg a day of leaves will do for you. Lubango comes from the Vienna Zoo, where he was born in captivity. In Naples he'll roam around an enclosure with three elephants, gnus, ostriches and some baby llamas. Recently the zoo has also added a crocodile, a hippo and inaugurated a new tiger enclosure. (Presumably the sweet widdle wwamas and Lubango, the new giwaffie, are not in the same enclosure as the croc or tigers. Who knows? I've seen them do worse!) Though the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) does not count the giraffe as an endangered species, the population is declining in Africa due to the destruction of habitat. The entire Naples Zoo now is on 80,000 sq. meters of land/c. 20 acres. Their promo literature goes to great ends to tell us that they're doing their very best to expand and maintain. I've heard that before, but I'm hopeful. The Naples Zoo- no. 8 April 10 2017 April 9, 2017 - The Naples zoo has presented two new tigers, Annibale and Arcana. They were donated by private philanthropy. Arcana is an example of a white tiger (pictured) (also known as the bleached tiger, a pigmentation variant of the Bengal tiger). We note that this particular sub-species of tiger no longer exists in the wild. The last wild white tiger was killed in the 1950s; all white tigers alive today are the result of careful breeding programs. They are not that rare considering the great number of breeding programs in the world, especially in India. In European zoos, however, they are not too common; the Zoologic Garden of Lisbon has five, all born in the zoo; and two Bengal white tigers were born in a zoo in Gyor (Hungary) in January 2015. There are a few others. Naples now joins the list. Close Those are just clouds above the cone, but the folks who built the houses you see on the slopes of Vesuvius (photo, right) are obviously optimists, for the question is always, "Isn't it about time?" (Of course, you never ask that question aloud because that brings bad luck. Yes, your loud mouth might well cause the next one!) Well, is it time? With all the pompous weight of scientific certainty, I can now say...uh, maybe. It is instructive to look at the recent history of eruptions for a clue. 'Recent' is relative. We can take the last 400 years or so because in geologic terms that is but a heart-beat. Working back from the present, the last eruption of Vesuvius was in March, 1944. It happened in full view of the Allied armies, which had taken the city of Naples a few months earlier. WWII was still raging farther north in Italy when Vesuvius went into what is called an effusive eruption (less violent than an explosive eruption, but nevertheless dangerous and potentially deadly). That eruption destroyed a number of nearby towns; the volcanic ash also rendered useless the planes of a U.S. B-25 bomber group parked at the Capodichino airport in Naples.) There are still a lot of people in Naples who remember that one, including at least one U.S. Army captain (still in Naples!), Herman Chanowitz, whose wartime memoirs are chronicled elsewhere in this encyclopedia. [Also see this additional photo of Vesuvius during the 1944 eruption.) Vesuvius, 1944 eruption. Photo: H. Chanowitz. Photo restoration: Tana A. Churan-Davis. Eruptions count as major or minor (and everything in between) depending on the extent to which they are explosive or effusive, how much ejecta they produce and the extent to which they change the profile of the volcano, blowing bits and pieces away, adding new craters, new lava flows, etc. Thus, the eruptions of 1929 and 1926 were minor, but they did, for example, add a few new craters and damage nearby structures. There was also geologic activity of a different nature near Naples in that period; a major earthquake struck the Irpinia region (i.e., near Avellino) on July 23, 1930, killing 1500 persons. (Earthquakes are not necessarily related to volcanism, but at least in this area, there is that possibility.) The eruption of April, 1906, was massive and attracted worldwide attention. (Indeed, for an unusual aside to the 1906 eruption, see The Wonderful Wizard of Chittenango.) It killed 100 persons and buried nearby towns. The initial rumblings, however, caused little alarm and locals joked that 'the mountain' was just preparing a royal welcome for British King Edward, due in Naples for a visit shortly. He made it just in time for an eruption that dropped the ridge on the main cone some 250 meters, according to Prof. Raffaele Vittorio Matteucci, the director of the Vesuvius observatory. The eruption covered the city of Naples, itself, with ash, and made the roads near the volcano impassable. Residents of destroyed villages fled to Naples or to nearby towns such as Castellammare. The eruption was followed by heavy rains that produced what geologists now call a lahar (an Indonesian word)--massive mud-like slides of ash and water that buried everything in their path. The eruption created a heroic mythology around the persons of Matteucci and his US American associate, Frank A. Perret, who stuck to their stations in the observatory to gather data while hell raged around them. (Some sources reported at the time that it was the most massive eruption since the great explosion that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD. That may be an exaggeration, since the 1872 and the 1631 eruptions were likely to have been at least as powerful.) Matteucci's presence on the slopes during the eruption and his constant messages of reassurance to the population of Naples were credited with avoiding a general panic. [See also: this New York Times article from 1906, praising Matteucci.] [See also: this account of the 1906 eruption by Herbert M. Vaughan.] There had been a few warnings of the strong 1906 eruption a few years earlier. In 1900 there was a "Strombolian eruption," that is, a strong but relatively low-level volcanic eruption with regular ejections of incandescent material to altitudes of tens to hundreds of meters. From the city of Naples at night, it was something like watching a pretty good fireworks display. That activity continued through 1903. In the 1880s and 1890s there was constant visible volcanic activity on Vesuvius, small but enough to produce minor secondary cones and small lave flows. As in 1930, the period also contained a major earthquake, this one on the island of Ischia on March 4, 1881. eruption of 1872 (photo: G. Sommer) The year 1872 produced a massive eruption classified as explosive/effusive. Somewhat earlier, in 1841, the geological observatory, itself, had been founded, right on the slopes. The institution was the brain-child of Macedonio Melloni (1798-1854), who became the first director. It survived the political upheavals that came with the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples and its absorption into the modern nation state of Italy. The directorship then passed to Luigi Palmieri (1807-96), who was on duty constantly during the 1872 eruption.You can see the observatory today and from a distance notice that it sits on a handy knoll with the lava flow of the '72 eruption going around it! There were even more scientific heroics as the director, Prof. Palmieri, refused to leave so he could man the instruments. Unlike Matteucci, later, Palmieri was totally cut-off and alone. Eruption on 1822 (painting: Camillo De Vito) The 1850s had constant activity, more Strombolian than explosive, but enough to cause lava to flow, secondary cones to open and artists to paint. The same can be said for the eruption of 1839 and other smaller events in that decade. There is, again, constant activity back to the turn of that century, including a major eruption in 1822 (image, right); in the 1700s, there were at least three notable eruptions: 1707, 1737, and 1794, all of which destroyed local villages. As well, there were weaker eruptions in the 1750s and 1760s. The 1794 eruption opened craters at relatively low levels on the slopes at 480 and 320 meters. (The current height of Mt. Vesuvius is 1280 meters.) The modern cycle of eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius started Dec. 16, 1631 with an eruption classified as explosive (as opposed to the less violent effusive or explosive/effusive). The volcano had been quiet for some centuries and then simply blew its top. Most sources cite this eruption as the greatest since Pompeii. It followed the familiar behavior of an exploding volcano: lava fountains as high as 4 km and an ash column as high as 15 km, which then collapsed onto the slopes producing what is now called a pyroclastic flow. It was followed in 1637, '49, '52, '54, and '60 by lesser eruptions. Some of those were accompanied by earthquakes; indeed, even the dreaded bubonic plague showed up in 1656, lending credence amongst believers to the rumor that the world was coming to an end. It didn't, of course, and it won't after the next one. (My friends--the people in those houses in the top photo--tell me that I should really be quiet and, especially, should delete those last few words.) By agreement, then, we stop at the 1631 eruption, a harbinger of the active 300 years to come. But perhaps one item from before that is of interest. One of the most interesting and iconic statues (photo, right) in the city of Naples is the Fountain of Spina Corona. It is a marble representation of an angelically winged siren, Parthenope, the eponym of the original city, above Vesuvius. She is pressing her breasts to direct the streams of water/milk onto the flames of the volcano to extinguish them. The work bears the Latin inscription Dum Vesevi Syrena Incendia Mulcet [While the siren of Vesuvius calms the flames]. That may be a pun in Latin since the Latin infinitive mulcere--besides meaning to calm or caress--can also mean to soften, as in to make metal soft, and Mulciber is, in fact, one of the nicknames of Vulcan, the Roman god of the forge, guardian of fire, and source of the word volcano. So she is 'mulceting' the 'mulciter'. That's funny. So is the fact that she seems to have the legs of a chicken; I don't know why, but I'm sure it's complicated. Some sources say, simply, that the statue was done at the behest of Spanish Viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo around 1550, and some from the 1600s even claimed that the siren putting out the flames of the volcano was intended to represent the way Toledo had extinguished the fires of potential revolution. Be that as it may, there are references to the statue from the 1400s, so it couldn't have been Toledo's idea, no matter what people wanted to read into it later on. Most opinion is that it is from the Aragonese period in the 1400s and the Spanish effort around 1550 was a remake. That remake was overseen by Giovanni da Nola (1488-1558), one of the great names of the Italian Renaissance. He worked principally in Naples. His altars, sepulchers, and monuments are found in many of the great churches in Naples; he also built a number of the city's monument fountains from the 1500s. The fountain has recently been restored and is located outside the church of Santa Caterina della Spina Corona, not far from the Fredrick II university in what used to be the Portanova section of the city. The church, itself, goes back to 1354 when it was built as an annex to a Benedictine monastery and, in its long history, has even been a synagogue. The original statue of winged Parthenope is in the National Museum. The restored fountain uses an exact replica by Achille d'Orso, the prominent Neapolitan sculptor from the early 1900s. In popular and not totally unexpected vulgar parlance, the work is also referred to locally as la fontana delle zizze (The Fountain of the Tits). Finally, the current period of calm on Vesuvius —no visible activity since 1944 (although "events" such as rumblings and movement are detected by instruments)— has Domenico Maggiore "In Naples, the answer to that question is usually "yes." There is always a "same guy who did". Or built. Or painted. Or sculpted. There was a small, busy cadre of illustrious painters, sculptors and architects in the Naples of the 1600s and 1700s who created much of what made the city into an artistic treasure in those years. The sculptor Giuseppe Sanmartino comes to mind; his magnificent Veiled Christ is more famous than his other works scattered throughout the city, but it by no means puts the others to shame--not by a long shot. And Cosimo Fanzago? If you see a Baroque-y church in Naples and you're not sure, guess Fanzago. Statistically, it's better than even money, and even if you're wrong, it will still impress your friends. (Your enemies, however, may counter with, "But what about that double-gerbilled hyper-atrium." Be prepared.) D.A. Vaccaro is another one of the great creators of eighteenth-century Naples. As a painter, he trained under Francesco Solimena. Some of Vaccaro's paintings survive, such as the Penitent St William of Aquitaine in the church of Sant'Agostino degli Scalzi. It is, however, his sculpture and architecture that left an indelible stamp on the city. Having said that, unfortunately one of Vacarro's early works of sculpture proved to be not so indelible after all. The grand obelisk in the middle of Piazza del Ges, perhaps the most ornate work in the entire city, was originally surmounted by a bronze equestrian monument to Philip V of Spain, a splendid piece by Vaccaro and his father, Lorenzo, a prominent artist in his own right. When the Spanish were forced out of Naples in 1700, the monument was destroyed. (Charles III later replaced it very wisely with a statue of the Immaculate Virgin, supremely immune from fickle mobs of statue-topplers.) Much of Vaccaro's sculpture is on the premises of the San Martino monastery (now a museum), such as the figures of Providence and Divine Grace for the chapel of San Giovanni Battista (John the Baptist) on the premises, as well as half-length busts of St Januarius and St Martin for the main courtyard. He worked extensively, as well, to decorate the crypt of the church of San Paolo Maggiore in the historic center of the city. The Immacolatella Vaccaro's most visible work in the historic center is another tall column (top photo) this one in the square of San Domenico Maggiore. The spire was started after the plague of 1656; the design was by Cosimo Fanzago. The work, itself, was undertaken by royal architect, Francesco Antonio Picchiatti (1619-94),* whose concern for documenting and preserving the great number of remains of the ancient Roman city of Neapolis beneath the site caused construction to be suspended in 1680 when the spire had reached only about half the height one sees today. Vaccaro later undertook to finish the project and delivered it in 1737. The finished carved obelisk and bronze statute of St. Dominic on the top are his. Vaccaro also did innumerable models for silversmiths and ornate figures for the presepe, the traditional Neapolitan Christmas manger displays. [* F. A. Picchiatti is also responsible for the chapel in the building of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples, which contains Caravaggio's The Seven Works of Mercy as well as for the original convent of Santa Croce di Luca, begun in 1643. The convent stood at the extreme western end of the old historic city (#39 on this map). It was demolished in 1900 to make room for the new Polyclinic hospital; a small section was left standing as a historical marker. Additionally, Picchiatti was one of the architects who carried on from Fanzago on the construction of the church of Santa Maria Egiziaca a Pizzofalcone. The story has come down that Picchiati's home was somewhat of a museum in itself, testimony to his wide-ranging interests behind his profession. His private "museum" held 20,000 ancient coins, 6,000 inscribed pieces of marble, 300 bronze statues, various domestic implements of aniquity, ancient weapons, a library of paintings and 1200 books.] Vaccaro's architecture is what may stand out to casual visitors to the city. Anyone who visits the courtyard of the Santa Chiara complex will note the majolica decoration (photo, above. Click here for a separate item on the restoration of that courtyard.) As well, a stroll along the otherwise dismal port section of Naples will bring you to the delightful (but as yet unrestored!) old customs station (photo, above right), the Immacolatella, the only part of 18th-century Naples still standing in that immediate area. That, too, is Vaccaro's. He also planned what turned out to be the most spectacular building never [sic] built in Naples! It was to be the Palazzo Tarsia, now in the heart of the crowded Montesanto section of Naples and overlaid by two centuries of rebuilding, destruction and subdividing. The outlines of the original building, amorphously wedged into an unbelievable hive of buildings, are vaguely indentifiable from above. The elaborate terraces, ramps and gardens to the extent that they were ever completed are gone. Vaccaro's own engraving for the project still exists (illustration, left). Also see The Church and Mosaic of San Michele on Capri. Also see The Church of San Michele Arcangelo (at Piazza Dante). Close If you think you understand what was happening in southern Italy between the coming of the Angevin dynasty in 1200s and its departure in the 1400s, then you have not been paying attention. And even if you have, it really wonot help much. It was a complicated time. (Maybe this short version will help.) I am wondering about a book called Queen of Night, by Alan Savage. I haven't read the book, but I have read a plot description that includes this passage: Queen Joanna I of Naples was the most beautiful and accomplished woman of her times. She is also remembered as a cold-blooded murderess and woman of the most questionable morals. Queen of Night is her story...[one of an]..astonishing range of intrigue, romance, warfare, rape, betrayal and sheer adventure..Queen of Night is an enthralling account of a truly remarkable woman.. Joanna I I am tempted to think that the author, like many-including Neapolitans-has fused Joanna I and Joanna II into a single woman-beautiful, accomplished, cold-blooded, and immoral- kind of like Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven, or, for the younger generation, the queen beast in Alien Resurrection. To set the record straight (primarily to get poor Joanna I off the hook) here is the chronology of the Angevin dynasty in Naples: Joanna I became sovereign of Naples in succession to her grandfather King Robert in 1343. She has no record of immoral intrigue. (OK, some say she had a hand in the murder of her first husband, but it was the 14th century-that's a parking ticket.) She was put to death by Charles, duke of Durazzo, who regarded himself as the legitimate king of Naples. It is this woman who fits the description of "accomplished," at least intellectually. She kept the company of the poets and scholars of her time, including Petrarch and Boccaccio. Joanna II Joanna II, on the other tentacle, is the preying mantis man-eating queen that Neapolitans still speak of when they point out this or that building and whisper, "That's where Joanna murdered her men after making love to them." These sites "include but are not restricted to" (to hedge my bet with some legalese) the Villa Donn'Anna at the beginning of the Posillipo coast; the no-longer extant Villa of Poggioreale; a ruined mystery villa on a chunk of rock at water's edge in Sorrento; and the alligator-infested sub-dungeon of the Maschio Angioino (the Angevin Fortress) at the main port of Naples. Such tales are usually replete with hidden torture chambers and may include 100% un-verifiable episodes of sex with horses. This Joanna came to the throne at the age of 45 after a dissolute life. She brought with her a young lover and went through a series of others in a period that is one of the most confusing in the confusing history of Naples. The traditional view is that she was not a particularly astute woman, and that her reign was one long scandal, one which ran through even the reign of her immediate successor and did not end until the entire Angevin dynasty was replaced by the Aragonese. Recently, historians have tended, however, to give Joanna II the benefit of the doubt. Anecdotal accounts of her personal vices are less the focus of interest than is the fact the Naples in the 1300s and early 1400s was pretty much ungovernable, especially by a woman-any woman; "Femines non sunt ut homines viriles" ("Women are not as virile as men,"said the Florentine Doppo degli Spini when asked about Giovanna, thus converting what is biologically delightful into would-be profundity about ability to govern.) She did surround herself with a lot of men, but almost all of them were potential power brokers. These, again, included but were not restricted to William of Austria, Padofello Alopo, James II of Bourbon, Sergianni Caracciolo, and Munzio Forzo, some of whom she married, some of whom she adopted and some of whom she just made love to. The Angevins had taken a risk in the mid-1200s by moving the capital of the kingdom from Palermo to Naples. True, a capital in southern Italy-once removed from Sicily-was no longer as exposed to the potential flanking pincer moves of Islam in Spain and in the Balkans; it was also closer to the dynastic homeland, France; but it was also closer to the centers of northern European military and diplomatic intrigue. Giovanna may have been doing what she thought needed to be done to stabilize her kingdom. So, judge as you will, but at least keep them straight. Close The city of Naples-in its never-ending quest to bring art to the masses and especially to the masses who ride the subway to work-is not just going to spruce up the soon-to-be-finished university station at Monte Sant'Angelo with a few paintings or statues or even bronzed old jalopies disguised as installation art. They have hired British/Indian artist Anish Kapoor to turn the entire station, itself, into a work of art. The station will be among the deepest in Italy (about 40 meters) and-well, the area is in the Phlegrean Fields, not far from the mythological descent into Hades- so, says Kapoor: "We want to create the impression of a Dantean descent into the underworld." No one seems to know exactly what that means, and few are in a hurry to find out. It's hell getting to work, anyway. Neapolitans are most familiar with Kapoor from his gigantic site sculpture, Taratantara, originally created for the new Gateshead's Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts in England in 1999, but then set up in Piazza Plebiscito (photo) in Naples in December of 2000 as that year's contribution to the annual exposition of installation art of one sort or another. The title is meant to be echoic of the sound made by a trumpet fanfare, as in Roman poet Quintus Ennius' line, "At tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dixit" - ("But the trumpet sounded with its terrible taratantara", the onomatopoeia usually left untranslated). Indeed, the sculpture suggests two funnel-like trumpet bells joined and flaring out to both ends, something like those strange geometric figures that scientists use to describe what sort of transdimensional hyperspace thing (a technical term) we shall have to traverse if we ever hope to reach the stars. Taratantara was made of a shiny red membrane, glittered in the sun, was about 50 meters long, 20 high and was anchored in Piazza Plebiscito by steel columns at each end. While it was up, the columns were scaled by demonstrators. They weren't out to damage the sculpture-and didn't-but the offices of the Naples Prefecture bounds the north side of the square and that's always a good place to have a demonstration. I am reminded of a clipping I read once in the paper: An English art student's work was thrown out, literally, after an official at a Birmingham art center mistook it for trash from the opening day party. Ceri Davie's "Piece de Resistance" involved red jellies displayed on plates and was intended as a metaphor of decay. 'Months of hard work had just gone to waste,' the artist said. "I was quite horrified. Very few of us realize the tough row that artists have to hoe in dealing with Philistines such as that art center official. This is probably because practical hoes weren't even invented until the Middle Ages. As far as we know, the Philistines just got down on all fours and grubbed their rows into shape with their hands. Many years before the Decadent Red Jelly affair referred to above, one of the artist's earlier works, Empty Paper Picnic Plate-which consisted of an empty paper picnic plate-was not at all well received by critics, who found the title too hard to say five times real fast and who also mistook "empty paper" as a metaphor of life instead of a Minimalist description of paper picnics, the plate itself being just a secondary, but sardonic, applique -which is just as well, since it too was given the old heave-ho. Fortunately (maybe), it was saved, since the art center official who tossed it, threw it into what he thought was a trash bin, but which, in fact, was also past of the art show. And then there was the artist's Hamburger, those little pointillist nibbles of semi-conceptualist cholesterol-laden ground Boeuf, a yummy but still youthful version of her later, futuristic, Quarter-Pounder With Cheese, in which patrons of the art show were required to flip burgers in the kitchen, then ask themselves in the drive-through microphone if they "would like fries with that?" and then-ah, the stochastic power of it all!-eat or not eat the work of art! How was the artist to know that they had scheduled the exhibit in the same hall as a dog show? It was to her credit as a resourceful master of Performance Art that she retitled the whole thing, Gone to the Dogs, A Metaphor. (Or Maybe It's a Simile). Davies is not the only artist who has had this trouble. Fortunately, I am in the possession of a section of the diary of Michelangelo (the National Library knows nothing about this): January 8, 1504. Dear diary. I'm ruined. After years of work in chipping away the pieces, I have finally figured out where beauty is, and it's not in chubby women with smiling faces. I busted my hump on this one, too! (Alas, even in a society where males with humps are considered good omens, there is not much use for a sculptor with a busted one, I'm afraid.) I spent three years on this! A veritable mountain of chips, shards, bits, detritus, little stone chunks lying where they fell, all at different odd angles, each one with a special metaphor to it, deconstructing, as it were, the sordid and complex confusion of our times. And in stone!-in Carrara marble as eternal as the plots, counter-plots and intrigues that surround us. I was going to call it something like Plots, Counter-Plots and Intrigues. (Ok, I hadn't given it that much thought, yet.) I figured it was about time someone put it all into permanent artistic form. Why paint anymore?! The colors will just fade and then someone will come along and invent cartoonists and hire one of them to touch up my Sistine Chapel with paint-by-the-numbers Day-Glo! So I finish it and leave it outside. Where else am I going to keep it, in my living room? This morning it's gone. Those morons took the waste rock and put it on display! 'It looks just like a boy with a slingshot. Cool!' they said. And my work of art? 'Oh, that crap? We threw it away,'they said. I was talking about this with Leonardo From Vinci (man, what a one-horse burg that dump is!). He has strung an invention of his, a 'talk gizmo' between his house and mine -two ceramic cups and a very long thread. It works all right, except that since our houses are many miles apart, communication kind of breaks down when Tuscan peasant women somewhere in between start hanging laundry on the line. He says he's working on a very long thread on a spool, which would actually let you converse as you walk around the street. Like I'm going to hold my breath waiting for that one. He asked me what I was doing wasting my time with rocks, anyway, when I could be building things he called 'aeroplanes'. He told me he was undecided about what to paint on the part he called the 'fuselage' - an eagle carrying lightning bolts in its talons or a chubby women with a smiling face. I suggested a smiling woman holding lightning bolts. He was not amused. A weird man, Leo. Frankly, I don't think the old geezer is playing with a round boccie ball, anymore. I'll see your metafour and raise you five. 2. entry The large and spacious square between the main facade of the Royal Palace and the Church of San Francesco di Paola is Piazza del Plebiscito. It is ideally suited for outdoor concerts, street musicians, jugglers, and large groups of tourists to shuffle nervously as they are efficiently herded from statue to statue by stray dogs. The square also lends itself to modern sculpture of the kind that art critics call "installation art" and the rest of us rustic dullards call, "What in the world is that supposed to be?!" Generally speaking, installation art requires some-well,installation-something in the way of mounting, draping, hanging, digging or soldering. The displays, themselves, may include ("...but are not limited to...," as lawyers so craftily hedge) metal, wood, plastic, rubber, and assorted minerals, fabrics and liquids. And so, in past years, Piazza del Plebiscito has seen a gigantic mountain of salt dotted with pieces of machinery, apparently a metaphor of whatever it is that salt represents confronted with whatever it is that machinery represents-maybe life beset by technology. (Hmmmm, not such a "rustic dullard" now, huh?!) Then, one year, there was a large wooden replica of an ancient lighthouse that used to guard the harbor of Naples. Last year, there was a gigantic replica of the Angevin Fortress made entirely of soft-drink cans (photo). These exhibits go up in early December and are left in place for the Christmas holidays, at which time they are "uninstalled". Most of them are environmentally friendly enough to be dismantled easily or, in some case, vacuumed up. In December 2002, they tore up the paving stones in the square. According to the paper, no one in the city administration recalls giving the go-ahead for any of this digging, but the latest piece of ephemeral sculpture was duly installed. It is a work by German sculptor and film maker, Rebecca Horn. Her history includes mechanical and body-extension sculpture as well as installation art on the premises of an insane asylum in Vienna. Austria. Her work is often controversial. The work consisted of a number of bronze skulls implanted in the pavement (photo). The work, thus, is Horn's tribute to-or variation on-the well-known Neapolitan "cult of death" (so-called by some) that centers on the vast collection of human skulls on the premises of the Fontanelle cemetery in Naples. The work is "site specific," a sub-genre of installation art, in that it makes sense only within the context of the place where it is exhibited-in this case, Naples. The Fontanelle cemetery is carved out of the tufaceous hillside in the Materdei section of Naples. The vast chambers on the premises served for centuries as a charnel house for paupers. At the end of the 19th century, Father Gaetano Barbati had the chaotically buried skeletal remains disinterred and cataloged. They then remained on the surface, stored in makeshift crypts, in boxes and on wooden racks. From that moment, a spontaneous cult of affection for, and devotion to, the remains of these unnamed dead developed in Naples. Defenders of the cult pointed out that they were paying respect to those who had had none in life, who had been too poor even to have a proper burial. Though the practice has largely disappeared, devotees used to pay visits to the skulls, clean them-"adopt" them, in a way, even giving the skulls back their "living" names (revealed to the caretakers in dreams). Yes, all that. memento mori mosaic from Pompeii National Museum, Naples In the church of Purgatorio dell'Arco The display of skulls gives the whole thing a resemblance to the memento mori. This Latin phrase means "Remember you must die". As a noun, it thus means "a reminder of death". Historically, it recalls the slaves whose job it was in ancient Rome to ride in the chariot beside the conquering hero and whisper that single killjoy phrase ("Remember you must die") in his ear, just to keep Hero from believing his own press releases. In a Christian context, the "memento mori" plays a significant part in Neapolitan iconography. It is seen as a reminder to live the kind of life that will be judged worthy when that time comes. The courtyard of the museum of San Martino (an ex-monastery) displays carvings of skulls prominently, and a few churches in Naples have depictions of them on the facades or within, most notably, the Church of Purgatorio ad Arco on via Tribunali. As grisly as it may seem to outsiders, the Fontanelle cemetery is less a reminder of death than it is a popular manifestation of the desire to show affection for those who had so little of it in life. The point, then, of the work of art in Piazza Plebiscito dedicated to that bit of Neapolitan history is perhaps to connect the city a bit to its past, to its unusual-even bizarre-traditions, especially at this time of year. Some have welcomed the display, sight unseen, as a way to force one to shake off, even for a moment, the great mid-December haze of globalized Christmas kitsch. After all, what better way to remember the birth of the Saviour than with Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" as he stands with his reindeer in the traditional Neapolitan manger scene, the presepe, with the Holy Family, the Three Wise Men, and the Redeemed Grinch, all of whom are watching the colorized version of It's a Wonderful Life on a new broadband palm computer? (Sigh. I've seen that one. The movie, too.) [Also see "Memento vivere", a painting.] 3. entry ritual installation of art in Piazza Plebiscito features a work entitled "Naples," by the master of massive minimalism, San Francisco artist Richard Serra (1939-). It is a large spiral (already called "Contraception of the Gods" by those who view with some disdain the city's unabashed dedication to this kind of display). Entering into the giant orange sculpture of curved and bending steel plates, you spiral in, leaning in and out with the curves of the walls, to the center, where you can look up and see the clock tower on the facade of the royal palace (see photo and insert). Your perception as you navigate the deceptive geometry of this small, tilted space set in the larger space of the square, itself, is what gives validity to the work, says the artist. Clearly, to be a private experience-to be at all touched by the suggested metaphor of yourself in a similarly skewed private life-space set in the space of the world at large-the wandering in and out is best done slowly and alone and not as part of a curious herd elbowing their way in and out-unless, of course, you spend much of your time elbowing your way through life wondering what it's all about. That, too, is possible. The work bears an amazing resemblance to Serra's earlier "Torqued Ellipses," done in 1996, separate curved plates of towering steel, which, to the untrained maximalist eye-with a bit of imagination-might be fit together into a spiral. 4. entry Jan 2005 Installation It has been ten years since the city of Naples started adorning the vast Piazza Plebiscito with examples of "Installation Art"-exhibits of various kinds put in place in December and then taken down after the holiday season. Some of these works have evoked bewilderment in the eye of the beholder. Or hostility. Or admiration. That of, course, is what such art is meant to do: spin a web of extended discourse around itself, made up of people's reactions, which themselves become part of the answer to that nagging question: "What in the world is that supposed to be?" Such works in the last decade in Naples have included Mimmo Paladino's "Salt Mountain," Anish Kapoor's "Taratantara" (#1, above), and Rebecca Horn's exhibit of bronze skulls, "Spirits of Mother of Pearl," embedded in the pavement itself (#2, above). This year's work is Luciano Fabro's Italia all'asta (photo, left). Asta means auction in Italian; thus, "Italy for sale" or "Italy to the highest bidder" captures the spirit of the title. It is a 30-meter tower wrapped round by a convoluted map of the "Two Italies"-North and South-one part of which is inverted. The halves touch and, thus, are joined. The sculpture is marked in places with the names of various sections of the nation that have been sold off for one reason or another during the centuries-Nice and Savoy, for example, ceded to the French in 1859 in return for French help in the Italian wars of independence against Austria. The tower is also marked by the names of private corporations that have been allowed to buy "what belongs to the Italian people" (to cite the explanatory notes given out at Piazza Plebiscito); that is, fundamental resources in the areas of communication, energy, and the chemical and automobile industries, most of which have now been "privatised". The exhibit does not bill itself as a protest, but it doesn't have to. Anyone who has been keeping up with recent government attempts to sell off historical monuments in Italy will understand what the exhibit is all about. ("Welcome to Rome. See the Nike Colosseum!" Am I kidding? So far, yes.) First of all, the division of the gigantic representation of Italy into two-the Two Italies-recalls that split in the national psyche, something that might not occur to foreigners, but which is ever-present in the minds of all Italians, even a century and a half after unification. Second, in spite of the metal construction, the tower is probably best called by the religious or Baroque term, "spire"; it is set up in the middle of a large square, recalling two other large, permanent spires in Naples (at Piazza del Gesu Nuovo and Piazza San Domenico Maggiore), and is, in fact, a tribute to the importance of the piazza in Italian history-the public gathering place. TGhis is where people talked, danced, bought and sold, where revolutions started, proclamations were read and even executions carried out. "The city is born from the square, not vice versa," says Fabro, in an original poem that accompanies the explanatory notes. It is the perfect site in Naples to generate questions about the modern identity of Italians, a people that are among the great bearers of European culture over the centuries. The exhibit has some interesting sidelights. One is the presence of various mathematical and musical symbols affixed to the colonnade of the church of San Francesco di Paola, the building on the west side of the giant square. (These are, I suppose, tributes to the Greek origins of Naples and Italian scientists and musicians of the past. It also reminds me that one year, the entire exhibit consisted of a single Fibonacci sequence arrayed around the semicircular facade of the church; 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34... They stopped when they ran out of columns or when Fibonnaci died-I forget which, but I am still engaging in my own internal "extended discourse" about that one. Stay tuned.) Also, Fabro has put together a sound track that will be heard around the square for as long as the exhibit lasts, repeating 25 segments; they range from an ancient Greek chorus to an Ambrosian chant to the classical music of Cimarosa and Pergolesi to, ultimately, a recording of Marconi's first radio message. 5. Dec.2008 For some reason, there will be no exposition of installation art at Piazza Plebiscito this year. I've just been down there and it is bone-bare, unless, of course, Christo has managed to install a gigantic sculpture of thin air of emptiness hanging over the entire square, called Thin Air of Emptiness. On the other chisel, the on-going shoring-and-sprucing up of the Galleria Umberto may be viewed as installation art, of sorts. I call it Shoring-and-Sprucing Up of the Galleria Umberto (photo, right). Alas, this means that there will be no large Christmas Wishing Tree this year on the premises. Come back in Twenty-oh-Nine. 6. entry I spoke too soon when I said there would be no installation art at Piazzadel Plebiscito this winter. They put it up a bit later than they normally do, and I didn't check back. This year's artist is Jan Fabre (b. 1958 in Antwerp, Belgium). He is described as "multidisciplinary"; he is a playwright, stage director, choreographer and stage designer. He also founded the Troubleyn theater company in Antwerp in 1986. Fabre has recently exhibited at the Louvre in Paris. His exhibit at Piazza del Plebiscito consists of five bronze sculptures, some of which have previously been shown individually in public spaces elsewhere. Thus, while the positions of the "parts" in the square no doubt mean something, the "whole" is not technically "site-specific" (that is, not made specifically and only for this square in Naples, say, in the sense of Rebecca Horn's Skulls a few years ago-#2, above). The five sculptures are: The man who measures the clouds (1998); The man who gives fire (or...with a light) (1999); The man who cries and laughs (2005);The astronaut who directs the sea (2006); and The man who writes on water (2006). The pieces are all of brilliantly polished bronze and are life-sized; they are set around the large semicircular piazza in front of the church of San Francesco di Paola (background, photo on right); ...cries and laughs (photo, above) and ...writes on water (photo, right) are in the main portion of the square; ...gives fire (below, left) is off to the side; ...measures the clouds (not shown) is actually atop the far-left half of the colonnade of the church; and ...astronaut who directs the sea (not shown) is not in the square at all, but on a balcony of the Royal Palace, which faces the square. Currently (as you can see in these photos), the entire display is cluttered by scaffolding and bleachers being set up for the New Year's Eve celebration. I say "clutter," but maybe it's part of the display. You never know with installation art. In the pompous vocabulary of art critics (cue professorial throat-clearing...ahem...),such displays are meant to interact with the viewing public and invite comments, comments that then become part of the "extended discourse" of the work, itself. In the case of Fabre's display, the morning after it went up, there was a single car parked directly next to the centerpiece, The man who cries and laughs (top photo); it is in the center of the square and shows a man atop a pedestal, facing the royal palace. His facial expression, as the name implies, shows laughter and crying at the same time. You are invited to interpret that as you wish. (That is, he is holding a book in his left hand, so maybe he's a student or, even worse, a scholar. He is staring at the grand Royal Palace and smiling at the centuries of culture therein contained; he is also crying because Naples is in such a mess. That sort of thing. That is only my own "extended discourse." Feel free to extend your own. Maybe we can throw a few punches.) The lone car in the morning hours was interpreted by passers-by in various ways: (1) It's part of the work; (2) It's the world's cleverest example of illegally parking a car, since the owner knows that people will think the vehicle is part of the work and leave it alone. (Conversation between two traffic cops in the square): -"What in the...?! He can't leave that car there!" -"Luigi, maybe it's part of the sculpture. If we ticket or tow it, we look like idiots." -"Do I look like an art critic to you? Call someone." A few hours later, the car was gone. That doesn't necessarily mean that it was not part of the sculpture. Maybe it was a piece of mobile extended discourse. The exhibition runs through Jan 18, but these displays sometimes run past the announced closing date. There was no printed explanatory material for this year. Here extendeth the discourse. 7. year's installment of "installation art" at Piazza Plebiscito was supposed to open yesterday, but there was an unspecified technical hitch; thus, we'll have to wait a few days to see "Pioneer II." It is an example of what is called "sound art" or "Cymatics"-the visualization of sound; that is, seeing the patterns caused, say, in sand or in a liquid, by sound vibrations. This physical link between the heard and the seen has interested a number of artists. You can test the effect by covering your Stradivarius with flour and starting to play. You see pretty pattens in the flour as it is "excited" by the sound-just as you are excited by the sudden drop in the value of your fiddle. This year's artist is Carsten Nicolai (b. 1965, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Germany). He has installed three large balloons moored with metal cylinders in the square (photo, right). The balloons are equipped with internal light sources and are electronically linked to motion detectors on Mount Vesuvius. Rumbles at the volcano are translated into audible pitch and run through loud speakers set up in the square. The effect of that sound causes something to happen to the balloons, but I don't know what. The purpose of it all is to show how intimately the city is linked to the volcano. So, if the metaphorical "balloon" at Vesuvius really does "go up" next week, I think the physical artsy balloons, too, will really go up like crazy and explode. So far, the cylinders are all you see. The exhibit will be in place through Jan 12. Art is hell. 8. Art is hell redux. The installation art at Piazza Plebiscito (above) didn't get off the ground. The art has been "uninstalled"-that is, the balloons have been removed from their cylinders. The display was too fragile, the windy weather wasn't helping, and, apparently, one of the components had already been damaged by a pre-New Year's firecracker. The museum that contracted for the display, MADRE Museum (an acronym for Museo d'Arte Donna Regina), spent €500,000 on it and now says that the artist, Carsten Nicolai, has some reserve art warming up on the sidelines. It will probably be called "Clouds of Light" and will probably reuse the same cylinders that contained the balloons. It should be in place by tonight. Ho-hum. The suspense is killing me. 29 OK, art is only heck. Except for the ongoing stink about how much money was spent on this fiasco, the crisis has been overcome by the installation of three "volcanoes of light" in place of the three large balloons. The physical set-up is almost identical; that is, there are now three large cylinders representing Vesuvius (and his two twin brothers?) in the square. At night you can enjoy the light display over the rims of the "volcanoes." The display is accompanied by volcano-ey rumbles of sound effects. At night, that is. Interesting point: this particular work of installation art is "site specific" (that is, the theme is bound to a particular place-in this case, our local volcano). That is not uncommon for installation art (Rebecca Horn's 2002 display in Naples was another example-#2, above). But this one is also time-of-day specific; you can only see it at night. If you know nothing of the display and walk across Piazza Plebiscito on a bright sunny day and see only the cylinders, you will no doubt work out some plausible interpretation of what it all means. This, of course, will have nothing to do with volcanoes. Not to fret-in the parlance of modern art criticism, your interpretation then becomes part of the "extended discourse" on, of, around and about the work. Feel better? some years ago). This year, the venue will be the Piazza dei Martire, the monument column in that square includes four statues of lions at the base. The display could be set up nowhere else since it consists of six life-sized fiber-glass replicas of one of the originals, the "prowling" lion by Tommaso Solari. The replicas have just stepped off their monument pedestal, symbolizing, according to the artist, a "reawakening" of the city. The installation is the work of Neapolitan artist, Nadia Magnacca (b.1958). She has a degree in biological sciences and has studied and taught photography; since the early 1990s she has exhibited photography and audio-visual displays throughout Europe. That she is a local artist-while not unique-is the exception rather than the rule for these exhibits of installation art in Naples. Maybe that's a good sign, too. As it turns out, there is nothing new under the sun. In 1972, a group of local artists calling themselves the "non-existent gallery" installed a plaster lion in the same square near the memorial column. No one seemed to mind, so they graduated to trying to unload a whole parade of similar critters along the seafront leading from the Castel dell'Ovo to Piazza dei Martiri (more than a half-mile!). This time, the local gendarmes were not amused. The artists did get permission, however, to put a few in the square, itself. The display was called Hic sunt leones-"Here year the city has taken a step back from its yearly tradition of presenting large-scale "installation art" at Piazza Plebiscito (or anywhere else, for that matter) during the holiday season. (I don't know if this means anything as far as the format of future displays is concerned.) Maybe people were tired of the very large and very expensive single-theme works (see the items above this one on this page). They were often by artists from abroad, so maybe, too, local artists got tired of being snubbed. This year, the theme seems to be "local artists," presented under the title of Percorsi most art and photo galleries, artists' workshops/studios around town, and other venues where displays can be set up (such as hotel lobbies) are open almost constantly and will remain open through January 6. It amounts to a large-scale moveable art show, with you doing the moving from exhibit to exhibit, from the works of French illustrator (who lives in Naples), Christophe Mourey, to video-art by Tony Stefanucci, to papier-mache sculpture by Rosa Panaro, and two-dimensional flat sculpture by Annamarie Bova, etc. etc. Generally speaking the displays are on premises spread through the traditional shopping streets from the San Ferdinando and Chiaia sections in the east (roughly starting at via Chiaia, near the Royal Palace) and then west to the Posillipo area past Mergellina. I am almost certain that the displays are all indoors. If there are exceptions involving real "street art," I haven't found them. Also for 2012, Opera per Cantalupo. See this link. lighthouse on Sicily First, an irrelevant item about lighthouses: the underlined phrase above the title is a strange expression not used since the unification of Italy (1861). Older texts printed in the Kingdom of Naples commonly referred to the island of Sicily as al di la del faro (beyond the lighthouse) and to the rest of the kingdom on the mainland of Italy (where the capital city of Naples was located) as al di qua del faro (on this side of the lighthouse). The reference was to the lighthouse near (but not at) Messina on Sicily, across the strait between the "toe of the boot" and the island. The usage goes back to the Angevin rule of the kingdom in the 1300s and 1400s. The lighthouse they were talking about is shown above (left). Although it is in the province of and comune (city, town) of Messina, it is not the Messina lighthouse; that one is 11 km farther down to the south and is at the Messina harbor, itself, the most important port in eastern Sicily for traffic over to Villa San Giovanni on the mainland and all points north. The one shown here, however, is back up at the NE tip of of the island (the extreme upper right on this map), where it tells ships coming across the Tyrrhenian sea from the west: Turn Here. This is where the first Greeks on Sicily built their lighthouse, right on the beach. You can swim across to the mainland, only 3 km away, but you'd be swimming into the infamous whirlpool of Scylla (mainland side) and Charybdis, where, yea, there be lots of monsters. It is historically one of the most significant lighthouses in all of Italy. Technically it is called the Cape Peloro lighthouse, named for the Greek mythological hero, Pelorus, as are the Peloritani mountains. The range runs for some 65 km from that little lighthouse down past Messina overlooking the Ionian sea on the east until it hits the slopes of great Mt. Etna. This modern lighthouse went into service in 1884. It is of masonry construction and has a rotating octagonal prism tower with a period of 10 seconds. The focal plane is 37 meters/110 feet above sea-level. lighthouse (above, right) is from the tavola strozzi, a painting from the late 1400s of Naples. That lighthouse is on the left in this image (left) from a 1653 map. It was called the "Tower of San Vincenzo". The main lighthouse is the one on the longer pier on the right and was built in 1487. Since the main lighthouse is not in the tavola (see that link) we can date the tavola to before 1487 but after the Tower was built (1477). It (naval ship yard) immediately to the west of that San Vincenzo pier, still seen in this painting from 1700. That ship yard has since disappeared and, obviously, subsequent construction and renovation over the centuries has wrought great changes to the port area; yet, much of it is still recognizable. or at least signal fires have been around ever since early cave-sailor decided that he would really like to sail into a harbor instead of into the rocks next to the entrance. The transition from signal fires to modern lighthouses (from wood to animal fats to kerosine to electricity) is beyond the scope of this entry; suffice it say that as splendid as we like to imagine the Lighthouse at Alexandria (image, right-one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), ancient lighthouses were probably not much better than a full moon to help you see where you were sailing. The truly modern lighthouse had to await the genius of Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788-1827), the French engineer whose design for a lens (now named for him) allowed the construction of multi-part, thin, light lenses without the size and weight required by lenses of conventional design. His lens revolutionized lighthouses, focusing 85% of the light of a lamp versus the 20% focused with the parabolic reflectors of the time. The first such Fresnel lens was installed in 1823 in the Cordouan lighthouse at the mouth of the Gironde estuary in France. Other places in the world changed over as quickly as they could. The Bourbons were restored to the throne of Naples in 1815. One of the marks of the "relaunching" of the dynasty was the attention paid to public works, particularly those in the important area of ports and harbors, naturally including lighthouses. The first Neapolitan scientist to propose the adoption of the new Fresnel system was physicist Macedonio Melloni (1789-1854), best remembered as the creator and first director of the Mt. Vesuvius geological observatory in 1841). In 1836, he proposed installing Fresnel lenses at the port of Naples and at Nisida. The installation of the Fresnel lens at the Nisida lighthouse occurred in July of 1841; local sources proudly called it "the first lens lighthouse on this side of the Alps." It was a great step forward for the kingdom in terms of keeping on a par with technical developments in the rest of Europe. That was also the year in which the Commission for Lighthouse and Beacons came into being with the task of applying the new system in the entire Gulf of Naples and eventually the rest of the kingdom. Melloni was in charge of the technical side; a number of others devoted themselves to architecture and design. Great effort was given to the design of these structures. The designers used the vocabulary of classical architecture-base, shaft, capital, dorian, fluting, etc.-in describing a lighthouse tower, for example. They weren't just putting up traffic-lights for boats; they were building coastal towers meant to please the eye and the spirit. Some of that is still evident in the photos, below. The commission decided to have 10 lighthouses as an initial goal; these were in the most obvious places: the Port of Naples (2), the island of Capri, Castellammare, Punta Campanella, Nisida, Baia, Capo Miseno, the island of Procida, and at Forio on the island of Ischia. from the period of the Grand Tour often included the Naples lighthouse. This version by Carlo Bonavia is from 1757. Some form of lighthouse stood on that spot from1487 to the 1930s. (See first photo, below.) Work on the lighthouses at the port of Naples was begun in September 1841. By 1847, six of the ten were complete. By 1850 attention turned elsewhere in the kingdom, to the Calabrian and Sicilian coasts as well as islands, including Ponza (see map, below), where the structure was called "the first lighthouse in the Kingdom" (meaning northernmost). In 1859 a General Plan for the Systematic Lighting of the Coasts of the Kingdom 'On this Side of the Lighthouse' was published. (There was a separate plan for Sicily.) The plan called for 67 lighthouses; at the time of publication, there were only 16 in existence. A royal decree approved the building of 41 of the remaining 51. The rest were put off. The study had also looked into the feasibility of restoring and using some of the many old Saracen towers along Italian coasts in order to defray expenses. Indeed, one of the constant complaints of members of the commission was that they were hindered by the tightwad treasury of the kingdom; as a result, in spite of the large, impressive Neapolitan fleet, the development of lighthouses lagged behind the rest of Europe, including other Italian states (still independent at the time) such as Sardinia and Tuscany. The unification of Italy (1861) changed the situation. In 1873 a commission for Ports, Beaches and Lighthouses was established within the High Council for Public Works and the first catalog of all lighthouses in the new united Italy was published. ----- There illustration, right, shows the location of lighthouses in and near the Gulf of Naples and the Campania region in general. (A few are shown below. Sooner or later, I may get them all.) For various reasons (such as modern electronic navigational aids aboard many vessels), lighthouses are not as necessary as they once were. (All sailors I have talked to, however, tell me that GPS navigation is fine etc. etc, but they really like to see (!) the light from the lighthouse at night.) Some elements of the lighthouse have, indeed, become, anachronisms; for example, to my knowledge, the only one of the lighthouses in the illustration that still employs a real, human lighthouse keeper is the one on Capri (see this link). There is more than just nostalgia here; there is something primordial and even mystical connected to lighthouses. Lucien Steil writes in "Metaphysical Archaeology of Lighthouses" in the American Arts Quarterly, Volume 27, number 2: In control of visible and invisible dangers, in convivial serenity with the infinity of seas and skies, superbly coordinating the movements of ships, planets and waves, lighthouses are superbly lonesome and solitary, yet still an intrinsically integrated part of a meaningful, all-encompassing order. Lighthouses inhabit natural and metaphysical landscapes like compassionate hermits... flashes every 10 s. The cape, isle and adjacent waters are part of the Cilento and Valle di Diano national park. and gallery. The station is directly below the massive Baia castle on a small island joined to the mainland by a sandbar. look something like this. The image looks almost exactly like the Tower of Hercules in north-western Spain; that one is an ancient Roman lighthouse, restored, still in working order, and said to be modeled on the Alexandria lighthouse because it used to be called the Farum the name of the island where the Greek lighthouse stood. The Tower of Hercules is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Naples in the 19th Century] fromthe website the Italian Association of the History of Engineering. Not dated. -Colombo, Antonio. "I Porti e gli Arsenali di Napoli" [The Ports and Shipyards of Naples] in Napoli Nobilissima, year 3, series in issues 1, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 9. 1894. spacious square between the main façade of the Royal Palace and the Church of San Francesco di Paola is Piazza del Plebiscito. It is ideally suited for outdoor concerts, street musicians, jugglers, and large groups of tourists to shuffle nervously as they are efficiently herded from statue to statue by stray dogs. The square also lends itself to modern sculpture of the kind that art critics call "installation art" and the rest of us rustic dullards call, "What in the world is that supposed to be?!" Generally speaking, installation art requires some —well,installation— something in the way of mounting, draping, hanging, digging or soldering. The displays, themselves, may include ("...but are not limited to...," as lawyers so craftily hedge) metal, wood, plastic, rubber, and assorted minerals, fabrics and liquids. And so, in past years, Piazza del Plebiscito has seen a gigantic mountain of salt dotted with pieces of machinery, apparently a metaphor of whatever it is that salt represents confronted with whatever it is that machinery represents —maybe life beset by technology. (Hey, not such a "rustic dullard" now, huh?!) Then, one year, there was a large wooden replica of an ancient lighthouse that used to guard the harbor of Naples. Last year, there was a gigantic replica of the Angevin Fortress made entirely of soft-drink cans (photo). These exhibits go up in early December and are left in place for the Christmas holidays, at which time they are "uninstalled". Most of them are environmentally friendly enough to be dismantled easily or, in some case, vacuumed up. In December 2002, they tore up the paving stones in the square. According to the paper, no one in the city administration recalls giving the go-ahead for any of this digging, but the latest piece of ephemeral sculpture was duly installed. It is a work by German sculptor and film maker, Rebecca Horn. Her history includes mechanical and body-extension sculpture as well as installation art on the premises of an insane asylum in Vienna. Austria. Her work is often controversial. The work consisted of a number of bronze skulls implanted in the pavement (photo). The work, thus, is Horn's tribute to, or variation on, the well-known Neapolitan "cult of death" (so-called by some) that centers on the vast collection of human skulls on the premises of the Fontanelle cemetery in Naples. The work is "site specific," a sub-genre of installation art, in that it makes sense only within the context of the place where it is exhibited, in this case, Naples. The Fontanelle cemetery is carved out of the tufaceous hillside in the Materdei section of Naples. The vast chambers on the premises served for centuries as a charnel house for paupers. At the end of the 19th century, Father Gaetano Barbati had the chaotically buried skeletal remains disinterred and cataloged. They then remained on the surface, stored in makeshift crypts, in boxes and on wooden racks. From that moment, a spontaneous cult of affection for, and devotion to, the remains of these unnamed dead developed in Naples. Defenders of the cult pointed out that they were paying respect to those who had had none in life, who had been too poor even to have a proper burial. Though the practice has largely disappeared, devotees used to pay visits to the skulls, clean them —"adopt" them— giving the skulls back their "living" names (revealed to the caretakers in dreams). Yes, all that. a memento mori mosaic from Pompeii National Museum, Naples In the church of Purgatorio dell'Arco The display of skulls gives the whole thing a resemblance to the memento mori. This Latin phrase means "Remember you must die". As a noun, it thus means "a reminder of death". Historically, it recalls the slaves whose job it was in ancient Rome to ride in the chariot beside Conquering Hero and whisper that single killjoy phrase ("Remember you must die") in his ear, just to keep Hero from believing his own press releases. In a Christian context, the "memento mori" plays a significant part in Neapolitan iconography. It is seen as a reminder to live the kind of life that will be judged worthy when that time comes. The courtyard of the museum of San Martino (an ex-monastery) displays carvings of skulls prominently, and a few churches in Naples have depictions of them on the façades or within, most notably, the Church of Purgatorio ad Arco on via Tribunali. As grisly as it may seem to outsiders, the Fontanelle cemetery is less a reminder of death than it is a popular manifestation of the desire to show affection for those who had so little of it in life. The point, then, of the work of art in Piazza Plebiscito dedicated to that bit of Neapolitan history is perhaps to connect the city a bit to its past, to its unusual, even bizarre, traditions, especially at this time of year. Some have welcomed the display, sight unseen, as a way to force one to shake off, even for a moment, the great mid-December haze of globalized Christmas kitsch. After all, what better way to remember the birth of the Saviour than with Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" as he stands with his reindeer in the traditional Neapolitan manger scene, the presepe, with the Holy Family, the Three Wise Men, and the Redeemed Grinch, all of whom are watching the colorized version of It's a Wonderful Life on a new broadband palm computer? (Sigh. I've seen that one. The movie, too.) [Also see "Memento vivere", a painting.] Close Some time ago, M., a dear friend and art historian, wrote me: "You probably know that the first instance of Greek language on an object was found in the Greek ruins in Ischia." I didn't. Dear M. was giving me way too much credit, but first things first. The Greek name given to the island we now call Ischia was Pithecusa. That's pith, as in pithecoid and pithecanthropous-ape. Island of the monkeys. Why would the Greeks settle on an island full of monkeys, you ask? Good question. (And this will be on the midterm exam.) The Greeks settled on Ischia because everyone knows they just love islands, and this one had a nice, nostalgic Olympus-looking mountain on it (which turned out to be a volcano!) (oops...not so...see Pithecusa). Mainly, however, they wanted an island as a convenient place to trade with the Etruscans, the mainland power in the Italy of 700 b.c. (the presumptive date of the settling of Pithecusa) without encroaching on the mainland, itself. The area was not unknown to the Greeks. Many centuries earlier, Mycenaean Greeks had visited the same bay. (See ""Uncovering the Bronze Age on Procida"".) There were, however, no monkeys. The pith- comes in because Greek mythology spoke of a race of thieving and mischievous little forest creatures called Cercopes that Zeus turned into monkeys and banished to various volcanic areas, one of which was our island out here in the bay. (I'm hazy on that. Cercopes means "-with a tail" in Greek and there is, indeed, a genus of monkey called cercopithecus; thus, I don't know if these little Greek proto-Leprechauns had tails before or after Zeus turned them into monkeys. Robert Graves in The Greek Myths (1955), section 136.c-d has "...[some say that Zeus] punished their fraudulence by changing them into apes with long yellow hair, and sending them to the Italian islands named Pithecusae." ["Islands" -plural-because the small island of Procida, next to Ischia, was included.] So, apparently, the settlers did not name the island when they settled. It was already Pithechusa and they had set out from Greece-Euboea, the second largest of the Greek islands-where things must have been dull, indeed, to sail to that volcanic island in Italy where Zeus had sent all the ape-men. Nestor's cup and early Greek writing. The Archaeological Museum of Pithecusa, open since 1999, is housed in the 18th-century Villa Arbusto in Lacco Ameno on Ischia. The jewel of the collection is "Nestor's cup" (top photo). That expression can be (1) a reference to Homer's Iliad and the golden cup belonging to Nestor, the wise, old advice-giver and king of Pylos; (2) a cup discovered at Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann (the excavator of Troy) that he claimed was the Nestor's Cup of the Iliad; or (3) the cup on display at the museum on Ischia. The Pithecusa cup bears an inscription in an early Euboean form of the Greek alphabet. This forerunner of our modern alphabet was in existence in Greece by about 800 b.c., and there are enough samples from 700- 600 b.c. to show that writing was widespread enough in the Aegean by then to serve as a practical means of communication, for commerce and even early literature. The cup in the museum was discovered in 1954 in a Greek tomb on Ischia and has been reliably dated to 750-700 b.c., making it at least one of (if not the) oldest sample of Greek writing found inscribed on an object. (The other candidate is the so-called "Diplyon inscription" a short text on an ancient Greek pottery vessel, found in 1871 at the ancient Dipylon Cemetery in Athens.) The cup on Ischia is more interesting since it actually makes the literary reference to Nestor's Cup. Translating the inscription on the cup, however, is many daunting steps up from "The pen of my duck is on the table" of your high school Italian class. This is Homeric Greek written in the oldest alphabet we have. Forms of letters have changed and the inscription, itself, is fragmented and has to be reconstructed. People who do this have lots of unfragmented letters after their names, and their discussions are replete with references to the Indo-European ablative and long vowel subjunctive and sentences such as "In Vedic Sanskrit, as in Homeric Greek (and contemporary Russian), the verb 'to drink' may take either an accusative or a partitive genitive of the liquid drunk, reflecting an inherited semantic opposition."* At least one plausible reading of the inscription, written in three lines, right-to-left, is: "This is Nestor's cup, good to drink from. Whoever empties it will be seized by desire for Aphrodite, crowned with beauty." It is generally agreed upon that the inscription was meant to be humorous-a piece of clay claiming to be the fabled golden cup, indeed! (Ho-ho. Slap my thigh and call me Ajax.) Other than that, the jury is out and probably never coming back. It may be a classical reference to the Iliad (given the ample wiggle room on the presumptive date of the writing of that classic); on the other hand, whoever inscribed the cup may have known about Nestor from other sources (after all, Homer had to get it from somewhere). It is also slightly racy-"seized by desire"- so maybe the inscription was the result of a "drinking game"-slightly tipsy potters in ancient Greece each inscribing a line. The Pithecusa cup was not manufactured on Ischia; it was made in Greece and brought to Italy by settlers. notes: *from "Observations on the 'Nestor's Cup' Inscription" by Calvert Watkins, in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 80 (1976), pp. 25-40. [also see this entry on Pithecusa] Close Greek historian and geographer, Strabo (63 BC - 24 AD), wrote that the stretch of Italian coast from Cape Miseno to Sorrento-the Gulf of Naples-seemed a single city, so strewn was it with luxurious villas and suburbs of the main city of Naples. The eastern end of the bay, before the land swings out to form the Sorrentine peninsula, is of course known today as the site of two towns that met their doom in the great eruption of Vesuvius in 79 a.d., Pompeii and Heculaneum. There is a third, lesser-known, and little-excavated town: Oplontis. It lies beneath the modern-day town of Torre Annunziata, such a short distance from Pompeii that it was almost certainly a suburb of that larger town and-according to recent archaeological thinking-probably the port for Pompeii, so close is it to the sea. The only large, significant excavation at Oplontis is the "Villa of Poppaea," referring to Poppaea Sabina, Nero's second wife. That is at least a possible conclusion from an amphora fragment bearing the name "Secundus," one of Poppaea's servants. In any event, it was almost certainly an imperial residence, opulently equipped as it was with a 60 x 15-meter swimming pool, a large number of rooms, intervening gardens and courtyards, and murals on the walls that are still splendid. Some of the extant murals are beautiful examples of the so-called "second Pompeian style," depicting artificial architecture on the walls-painted windows opened onto painted sea or landscape or onto painted rows of columns that fade away from the viewer through the use of perspective, all to give the illusion of space. It was, no doubt, one of the villas that impressed Strabo so much. Thepeacock mural" from Oplontis. It is remarkable for the use of pseudo-perspective in the columns and the trompe-l'oeil effect of the bird's tail. he existence of such a regal residence is, in fact, noted in the Tabula Peuteringiana, a medieval copy of a Roman road map. The villa and whatever other structures made up the small town of Oplontis were buried in the great eruption, however, and it wasn't until the 1500s that the Spanish rulers of the Kingdom of Naples came across the ruins of the villa while building an aqueduct. And it was not until the mid-1700s that further excavation was undertaken in the same wave of archaeological interest that spurred Charles III and then his son, Ferdinand IV, to lay bare such antiquities as Pompeii and Herculaneum. Yet, Oplontis remained-and remains-relatively unknown; the swimming pool wasn't uncovered until the 1970s and the site, itself, was not open to public visits until the early 1980s. The excavation is not complete and never will be, since Oplontis, like Herculaneum, sits beneath a modern town. To get into the site, you walk down a ramp until you are at ground level, 79 a.d. (about 30 feet below the modern streets and buildings that surround Oplontis). By far the most striking thing about Oplontis is what you don't find-human remains. And there are no lava molds of people huddled together in death, as there are at Pompeii. The Villa Poppaea was deserted when Vesuvius erupted. In the wake of an earthquake that damaged the town and villa severely in the decade before the great eruption, people had moved away so reconstruction could take place. Presumably, the residents were elsewhere, making typical complaints about how it took the Egyptians less time to build the pyramids than it does for us Romans to put a few bricks back in place, when real disaster struck. update: June 2014 (also at Miscellany 45) Oplontis is the least-known archaeological site between Naples and Mt. Vesuvius. Compared to Pompei and Herculaneum, it is practically unknown. Yet, it is worth a visit. The newspapers now lament the fact the a long-awaited archaeological museum for the site has yet to even get started (!) in spite of all the declarations of good intention by those holding the purse strings. If there no museum, then there is no place to exhibit the stuff and it sits in a warehouse and gathers dust-one, two, three. Even worse, an entire collection of marble statuary, amphora, mosaics, and gold jewelry is about to leave town as a traveling exhibit. It is part of the so-called "Oplontis Project," brain-child of US professor, John Robert Clark, currently directing excavations in Villa B of the Oplontis site. The exhibit, entitled "Leisure and luxury in age of Nero. The villas of Oplontis Near Pompei" will be on display at four different universities in the US, at least through 2015. I said "Even worse," but maybe it's not so bad. The indifference on the part of authorities to the site at Oplontis is unbelievable. Maybe if they see it being carted away... update 17 April, 2016 (also at Miscellany p. 60) It took some doing, but at last tourists and locals alike finally have a chance to see some of the treasures of Oplontis, the least-known of the Big Three sites destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. (the other two are Pompeii and Herculaneum.) The exhibit is at Palazzo Criscuolo in the town of Torre Annunziata, location of the ruins. On display on the premises of Palazzo Crisculo are 70 items from the ruins. The exhibit is entitled A picco sul mare. Arredi di lusso al tempo di Poppea [roughly, "Looking down at the sea. Luxury in the age of Poppaea."] The exhibit will run into December of this year. The project is part of the ongoing effort to open Oplontis-that is, the physical site, itself-to more and more persons. That plan continues and involves the participation of local high school students in the creation of a virtual reality reconstruction of the entire site that can be delivered to smart phones. Close of Eboli was a Benedictine monk from Eboli (about 70 km/45 miles SW of Naples). Not much is known about his biographical particulars. He was born after 1150 and probably died around 1220. For a while, he may have resided at Monte Cassino, the principal Benedictine monastery in Italy, and then at Eboli and Palermo in Sicily. He was a poet in the court of Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI (the father of Frederick II). He is remembered for some rather (according to some) sycophantic verse in praise of Henry as well as what might be described as the first guide book to the thermal baths of Pozzuoli and Baia. The work is entitled De balneis puteolanis [The Baths of Pozzuoli], one illustration from which is seen here (image, right). Peter did the illustrations, himself. Thermal baths had been widely touted since the times of the Romans to have curative properties. They still are; there are today baths in Pozzuoli, Baiai and on the island of Ischia where you can pretty much enjoy the same waters as did the Romans (except that they ran the risk of electrocution by using their computers in the water. You have wireless.) Peter's De balneis puteolanis praises the baths lavishly; it is written in verse and contains 35 illustrations. At least of few of them are probably the work of his imagination, but others are certainly attempts at authentic description. There have been various critical commentaries on De balneis puteolanis (see Clark) and there has been a recent facsimile edition published by Editalia. Above (and elsewhere) you may read about the long “therapeutic' history of the area of the Campiflegrei, known to the ancients for thermal baths that had marvelous curative powers. The area still has such baths, where treatments are even covered by national health insurance! This particular boxed text, however, is about one relatively little known commercial establishment called the Stufe di Nerone (image, right) on the banks of tiny Lake Lucrino between Arco Felice and Baia. That lake is on the right in the photo at the top of this page, separated from the sea by a narrow strip of land. The lake used to be a lot larger and, indeed, was part of Portus Julius, the training facility for the Roman Western Imperial Fleet. A volcanic eruption in 1538 destroyed most of the lake, however, (and even coughed up the mountain that the photo was taken from!) The Stufe di Nerone are in the trees against a ridge at the far end of that little lake. I was intrigued to read this in various sources: “The first known map of a cave dates from 1546, and was of a man-made cavern in tufa called the Stufe di Nerone (Nero's Oven) in Pozzuoli near Naples in Italy.” The first map of a cave! That grabbed me. I couldn't find it, so I called the patron saint of researchers, Selene Salvi of Napol Underground. She found it as she always does. This is it, a rather straightforward diagram. The map is accompanied on the previous page by a description of the purported benefits of the thermal waters. This map appears in De ortu et causissubterraneorum libri V. p.146, by Georgius Agricola (1494- 1555), a German scholar and scientist, known as "the father of mineralogy". Published by Froben, Basel, 1546. The website of the Stufe di Nerone uses the illustration by Peter of Eboli (directly above this box) and refers to it as “BALNEUM SILVIANAE (the present-day Stufe di Nerone)." Hard to say. Maybe it is; maybe it isn't. It's plausible since it's just a few hundred meters from the large Baia bath complex mentioned in the main article (above). The only thing certain about all of the baths in that area is that for many centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, they were forgotten about. Number one, the area was vulnerable to barbarian invasions: Alaric in 410, by Genseric in 456 and by Totila in 525, and those guys didn't care about taking baths, anyway! Fickle geology didn't help, either. The coastline was submerged by very active downward bradyseisms. Yet it staged a comeback as we see in the illustrations by Peter of Eboli. Yet again, however, geology wasn't through; there were earthquakes in the 1400s and a volcanic eruption in 1538 that actually produced, as noted, a new mountain—imaginatively called New Mountain! Under the Spanish (1500-1700) the area was refortified and thermal baths staged another comeback. They were on the Grand Tour of Europe before and after the Napoleonic wars. The entire area became less isolated in the late 19th century and especially the early 20th century when industry moved into nearby Bagnoli and large sections of popular housing units started to spring up at the western end of the bay of Pozzuoli. The 1970s and '80s saw more unfortunate seismic activity, and entire sections of Pozzuoli were abandoned. Sea levels in the bay changed such that port facilities had to be rebuilt. That activity has subsided, at least for the present. The current thermal facility, the Stufe di Nerone came into existence in the 1960s when two brothers rediscovered the ancient baths on property they inherited. The property is at the foot of a ridge that overlooks the western side of Lake Lucrino, and there are still a great number of remnant Roman bits and pieces sticking up in the brush. Over the years, the owners have cleared the brush, built an outdoor thermal pool, and reopened the original spaces that contained the old Roman baths—and given it a classy name, of course. -Clark, Raymond J. 1989-90. "Peter of Eboli, 'De Balneis Puteolanis': Manuscripts from the Aragonese Scriptorium in Naples," in Traditio, vol. 45, (1989-1990), pp. 380-389. Fordham University. New York. balneis puteolanis. 1994 facsimile reprint published by Editalia Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato. Rome. -Friese, W. 2010. "Facing the Dead: Landscape and Ritual of Ancient Greek Death Oracles" in Time and Culture, Volume 3, Issue 1 March 2010 pp. 29–40 Berg Publishers, London. - Howard, R.E. (1932) "The Sword on the Stone" in Weird Tales (May, Campi Flegrei. Rome: Libreria dello stato. -Paget, R.F.E. 1967. In the Footsteps of Orpheus; the Discovery of the Ancient Greek Underworld. Roy Publishers. London. -Rucca, G. 1850. Interpretazione di un luogo di Strabone. Stamperia Reale. Naples. -Salvi, S. 2011. "Sito archeologico di Baia," "Tempio di Mercurio" on the Napoli Underground website. -Sorrentino, Francesco. 1994. "Bagni alle Porte dell'Inferno." in Medioevo, cultural photo credits: Land of the Cimmerians, Temple of Mercury and the Ruins of the Baths at Baia courtesy of NUG (Napoli Undergound). produced in Naples were particularly so, especially those used during the Quarant’Ore devotion. That Italian term (also written as one word, Quarantore) means Forty Hours. It is a Roman Catholic exercise of continuous prayer in the hours before Easter Sunday to commemorate the hours that Christ was entombed before the Resurrection. The devotion was introduced in 1537 in Milan and by the end of the 1700s was widespread in the Roman Catholic world. The special altar is called in Italian la best-known Quarantore altar in Naples was made for the church of San Domenico Maggiore and is from the late 1600s. As part of the Back to Baroque events currently going in Naples, the altar, in its newly restored state (photo, right), is on exhibit at the Castel Sant’Elmo, after which it will be returned to San Domenico Maggiore. The documentation at the exhibit regarding the altar is this: The Machine for the Forty Hours is a complex liturgical apparatus that was used for the adoration of the Eucharistic Sacrament over a period of 40 hours, the time Christ spent in the tomb before the resurrection. The Jesuits proposed that this devotional practice, which began in the early 1500s as part of the Easter rituals, should also be followed during Carnival, to distract the people from their bawdy celebrations. During the 1600s, the need to attract people into the churches led to a real spectacularization of prayer. Vying with each other, religious orders set up in the churches vast, showy apparatuses, as well as the enormous monstrance, lights, music and choirs. [ed. note: in Roman Catholic ritual, the “monstrance” is an open or transparent vessel of gold or silver, in which the host is exposed.] The machine exhibited here is from the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore, where it was found dismantled. Restoring the machine to its original appearance required in depth research as well as finding all the scattered pieces and putting them together. Its extraordinary scenographic impact, typical of the persuasive power of the Baroque, is highlighted in the exhibition by the full-scale reconstruction of the altar of the Church of San Domenico, where the machine was originally erected. The machine, which can probably be identified with one described in a document from 1676, had parts added to it up to the early 1800s, almost certainly because of the need to restore or change parts that had worn out or been damaged when the monumental apparatus was assembled or disassembled. The main part is the cluster of great rays within which stands a small temple housing the monstrance with the consecrated host. The shaft bears the features of St. Thomas Aquinas. Although the name Forty Hours, itself, obviously refers to the hours before Easter, note that the devotional period was moved forward to include Carnival and then Lent. This gave rise, apparently, to the musical form we call the “oratorio”; musical performances on stage were not permitted during the period of Lent, so the church decided to bring some music to people in the unusual venue of a house of worship, itself. Thus, highly regarded composers of the Baroque were often employed to compose music for the period of Lent. This practice flourished under the Oratorian Fathers—thus, the oratorio. To see the altar in the photo as it must have appeared to worshippers, you have to imagine about two-hundred lighted candles in the spidery candelabras on either side of the figure of Aquinas, as well as a large canopy, elaborately woven from silk and gold threads above the entire apparatus. The underside of the canopy was ornately decorated with celestial images. The keen-eyed will notice something else: at the bottom of this monumental affair is a small figure of...a dog! The dog is holding a torch in its mouth. The dog with the torch is the symbol of the Dominican order. First, the Dominic in question, and founder of the order, is St. Dominic de Guzmán (1170–1221). Second, the standard story is that his mother had difficulty conceiving a child and prayed at the shrine of Saint Dominic of Silos. The mother became pregnant and named the child in honor of the saint. While she was pregnant, she claimed to have had a dream that her unborn child was a dog who would set the world on fire with a torch it carried in its mouth. Or you can believe that it is a rebus, an iconographic pun! (And I have just listened to an art history lady with lots of letters after her name explain this, so please don’t think I am being irreverent!) That is: Dominic (in English) and Domenico (in Italian) are from the Latin Dominus, meaning God. Then, cane means dog. In an age not known for thigh-slapping and guffaws, maybe two monks, who had been down in the wine cellar too long...well... Fr. Guido: Vinnie, what’s that? Fr. Vinnie: Oh, just a little figure I’ve been carving. Fr. G.: It’s a dog. Fr. V.: I know. Get it? San Domenico! Domenico comes from Dominus...God... Fr. G.: Uh, did you hear me ask you for a Latin lesson? Fr. V.: ...and domenicane is Fr. V.: ...but 'cane' also means the animal. You know —bow-wow! Thus, the figure can either refer to that dream or...get this!...to the sisters of our order! I mean, have you ever seen those women? So we mount this at the bottom of the altar when no one is looking... Fr. G.: Brother, do not pass Purgatory; do not collect 200 ducats. You are going straight to Hell. I hope you know that. to art portal Close three items appeared separately in the original version of the Around Naples Encyclopedia on the dates indicated and have been consolidated here onto a singe page. university The main building of the University of Naples is on Corso Umberto, one block east of Piazza Borsa. The building was erected between 1897 and 1908 as part of the massive urban renewal of that portion of the city, which saw the construction of the main boulevard, itself. Officially, the university is named for Frederick II of Swabia, the Holy Roman Emperor, who founded the university in the thirteenth century. It is, thus, one of the oldest such institutions in Europe. Originally, the premises of the university were at the nearby church of San Domenico Maggiore. This was at the time when Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) taught theology there. The University was moved in 1615 to the building that now houses the National Museum. It moved from there to its present location off of Corso Umberto in 1777, moving into what had been a Jesuit monastery and college. That structure was the Chiostro del Salvatore, built in the late 1500s. The main university building on Corso Umberto is simply a front for that older building behind it, which now houses the university library. [More on other ex-monasteries.] The entire complex is vast, stretching up the hill towards Piazza San Domenico Maggiore; it is one modern city block wide, as well, and includes the university library and a number of museums of natural science. Near the main building, across Corso Umberto, the University has additional space in the ex-monastery of San Pietro Martire, originally a Dominican establishment until closed in 1808. That two-level monastery, built in 1590, was entirely restored in 1979. 2. university I went out to the new University campus at Monte Sant'Angelo the other day. It is exactly that: a campus on the US model, a city unto itself in an area way out in what used to be acres of greenery on the periphery of Naples in Fuorigrotta in back of the S. Paolo soccer stadium. It looks to be about half-finished and has a futuristic look about it—lots of glass and steel, with tubular passages from building to building. Thus far, the campus houses the departments of physics, chemistry, biology and computer science—you know, all the "hard stuff". The humanities are still back in the middle of town (item, above) in converted 14th-century monasteries, no doubt a more appropriate setting for studying the metaphors of Dante and Boccaccio. Eventually, however, even students of languages and literature will move out to the new site. A subway station directly beneath the campus will link to the main line into the center of town. It's an ambitious project. Nov. 2007 3. The 2nd University of Naples—I've got it figured out. I mistakenly referred to "la which would be spoken as "the second university of Frederick the second"—confusing in any language. A woman kindly corrected me. Here's the deal: due to overcrowding at the medical school, the original "Federico II university" (top item) spun off a second university, now called, simply, "la seconda università di Napoli" (the second university of Naples). It has run classes since November of 1992. As far as the medical departments go, the massive university clinic up on the Vomero hill, which opened in 1973, is officially the Frederick II Polyclinic hospital; that is, it is run by the original (i.e. first) University of Naples. Everyone still calls it "the new polyclinic." The old polyclinic hospital, located at the west end of the historic center of Naples and the result of construction at the beginning of the 20th century, is run by the new (i.e. second) university of Naples. Got that? Good. I don't. Close As globalization has sunk its vast talons into our once diverse cultures, I have grown accustomed to seeing, for example, St. Valentine’s Day celebrated in Naples. So when I saw the first Halloween decorations go up around town some years ago, I shrugged it off as just another glum harbinger of the day when we shall all — Neapolitans and Australian Bakanambians alike— sit around the campfire on St. Patrick’s Day, nibble on our traditional Finnish karjalanpiirakka and sing Dixie. And yet, there really is a local Halloween, of sorts, near Naples. It's when witches and spooks come out at certain times and gather by the sacred Walnut Tree and do things that I am not at liberty to reveal (except that they dance and no doubt take shots of their famous and potent inebriating beverage, Strega [witch]). That place is Benevento in the hills about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Naples. It is the capital city of the province of the same name in the Campania region of Italy and supposedly founded by Diomedes after the Trojan War. In Italian lore and literature dealing with witchcraft, Benevento and the sacred Walnut Tree are in the same class as the Brocken in the Harz mountains in Germany, where northern witches gather on the night of April 30, Walpurgisnacht. The Benevento gathering is often called in Italian folklore the tregenda, a word that may derive from an old plural form of trecento (three hundred) used to mean any large number. Today, it is used only to mean the gathering of witches at propitious times of the year, typically the winter and summer solstice and vernal equinox. In 1600, the celebrated Jesuit and demonologist, Martin Antonius Delrio mentioned the noce di Benevento (Walnut Tree of Benevento) in his Disquisitiones Magicae libri sex (Six Books on Investigations into Magic), and the sacred tree and gathering of witches of Benevento crop up often in literature and anthropological studies. A poem published in the 19th century in Naples, Storia della Famosa Noce di Benevento (History of the famous Walnut Tree of Benevento) goes into some detail on the lore: there is the great serpent twisted around the tree, and then there is the poisonous nature of the tree, itself, such as to paralyze you if you fall asleep in the shade of the branches. More recently, Italian anthropologist and ethnologist, Giuseppe Reprint, 1980, Bollati Boringhieri. Torino. )*2 A large body of scholarship has developed over the years dealing with the obvious syncretism —that is, the mixing of snake worship (possibly from the cult of Isis, particularly strong in Benevento under the Romans) and various forms of tree worship from northern Europe (which has given us the Christmas tree, for example). Northern influence penetrated into Italy with the Lombard invasions after the fall of the Western Roman Empire; thus, it is plausible that northern lore mixed with local, earlier lore come together to give us the “witches” of Benevento. Locally, the witches are often referred to as janara, possibly from dianara, a priestess of Diana. Of the many legends that weave the Lombards into the origins of the lore is one that tells of a local Christian priest, Barbato, in the mid-600s, when Benevento was an autonomous Lombard duchy besieged at the time by the forces of Byzantine emperor, Constans II, still trying to maintain a hold on the exarchate, the Eastern Imperial enclave in Italy. The Lombard ruler of Benevento, Romualdo, made a vow to Barbato to give up his northern gods and embrace Christianity if Benevento were spared from the Greek forces. The Greeks, for whatever reason, lifted the siege and went elsewhere; Romualdo promoted Barbato to bishop of Benevento but reneged on his own promise to switch faiths and continued to worship his little golden statue of a viper (the snake from the tree, one supposes). Then, Romualdo’s good and faithful wife, Theodorada—and what a witch she was!—ratted him out to Barbato and gave the bishop the statue. Barbato melted it down and turned it into a chalice for the Eucharist; he then went and chopped down the walnut tree and built the church of Santa Maria del voto on the site. *1. Pericle Fazzini (1913-87), an Italian sculptor best-known for his 1977 work, The Resurrection, on the premises of the Vatican. The Dance of the Witches is from 1949 and is in the Fazzini family collection in Rome. *2. Cockayne means, roughly, “land of plenty”; the term goes back to ancient times, existing with slight variations in many languages. (See this link.) The Cocchiara book is not to be confused with the 1891 book, il Paese di Cuccagna by Neapolitan writer, Matilde Serao. to portal for traditions Close Around Naples Encyclopedia on the dates indicated and have been consolidated here onto a single page. yourself in a gondola, gliding along a delicate waterway, now and again passing beneath a quaint wooden bridge. Trees line and shade the footpaths on either side of the canal, and gentlemen and gentleladies are out strolling along the banks. Gracious villas are set back from the water's edge, and the faint melodies of late summer are in the air. Your spirit quickens a bit as the narrow waterway makes a final gentle bend and opens onto the majestic Grand Canal, lined by stately façades and crossed by picturesque bridges as it carries pleasure craft out—to the Bay of Naples! Grand Canal? Bay of Naples? But, surely, we are in Venice. Not exactly. We're in the Venice Quarter of Naples, part of an unfulfilled utopian scheme to change the city in the years before the turn of the century. Change is nothing new to Naples. Like medieval manuscripts written upon and erased over and over again, there has been new upon old in this city for a very long time. From the earliest Greeks to the present day, different civilizations have come and gone in the Bay of Naples and each has left its mark; the city, with a life of its own, has outlasted the single cultures that have formed her. It is still possible, for example, to find in Naples the intricacy of a medieval town, traversable only on foot and only by one who truly knows the way. The curved streets still conceal the secrecy and surprise of the Middle Ages, when you would turn a corner and find the small market or church hidden away. Moving forward in time a bit, you then find the imposition of Baroque order upon medieval clutter. When King Ferrante of Naples in 1475 characterized narrow streets as a danger to the state, he was but giving political voice to the new Baroque aesthetic of the straight and wide avenue, the open square and the imposing façade. The Naples that we see today, then, has very visible traces of a long history, but the shape the city has taken in this century is largely the result of things done or left undone in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Following the unification of Italy, Naples lost its role as a capital, and was faced with deteriorating social and hygienic conditions. Class differences and the inability of the city to plan and execute long-term urban goals put Naples behind other Italian cities in preparing for the new century. upon this scene in the 1870s a Neapolitan born of a Scottish father and Indian mother, Lamont Young, one of the most fascinating characters in the history of utopian urban planning. His plan, approved by the Naples City Council in the early 1880s, had it come to fruition, might have made the peaceful vignette of the opening paragraph reality instead of fantasy. "Utopian" has come to mean "impractical," but Young was quick to insist that his ideas for the Naples of the future were workable and economically beneficial. The key to Young's ideas on how to deal with the problems of urban sprawl—already evident in the Naples of the 1870s—was good mass transportation. A number of factors convinced Young that underground transit was the solution. For one, building new streets was difficult due to the layout of the city between the sea and hills. Young foresaw chaos if all traffic in a city such as Naples, with the same surface area as London and Paris, but twice their populations, stayed above ground. He rejected the piecemeal urban expansion of the city and the gutting of the historic center as a solution to the problem, since it involved impractical large-scale removal and relocation of the inhabitants. Instead, he favored a gradual and planned expansion away from the center—a "suburbanization"—by means of a metropolitana, an underground train system, which he would design and build. The the City Council called for proposals for a transit system. Young's plan involved (1) steam locomotives for tunnels to be built beneath Montesanto and Posillipo; (2) Tramways—horsedrawn cars on tracks, and (3) the Omnibus—horsedrawn of 1880 he presented a new plan to the City Council, complete with approximately one hundred tables and drawings. It detailed an extensive metro network of twelve stations along a 22 kilometer route from Fuorigrotta to the main train station, replete with passenger lifts to Vomero connecting to narrow gauge railways to the outskirts. The Metro rail gauge would be compatible with the state trains already in use, thus allowing the state railway to use the Metro tracks. Although the plan was generally treated kindly in the press, it was eventually turned down, and it is not exactly clear why. Perhaps it was due to general fear of structures collapsing from construction along the planned route. To meet this fear, Young modified his plan in 1883. Changes consisted largely in elevating some underground sections from beneath populated areas to run on the surface or overhead, leaving underground only those sections that passed necessarily though hills within the city. The plan entailed the creation of two new quarters of the city: one, a Venice Quarter, along the coast of Posillipo, and, two, a tourist and residential quarter in Campi Flegrei, west of the city, beyond the Posillipo hill. This new plan was published in 1883 and was entitled "The Metropolitana and Campi Flegrei," and it stressed safety. The underground stretches were through the tufa, deep in the hills, while the surface portions were away from residences or elevated to run high above roadways. The line started west of Naples in Bagnoli and covered the entire center of the city as well as the suburbs. It included the difficult hill areas of Fuorigrotta, Posillipo, Mergellina and Vomero, as well as the densely populated parts of the inner city and the central train station. From the station, elevated sections ran along via Marina and Riviera di Chiaia and back to Mergellina and Bagnoli. A separate line branched in from the seaside to handle the most densely populated downtown areas. Ingeniously, there were two separate Vomero stations, with passengers rising by lift 160 meters from the bottom station to the top one, where they could connect to railway lines for outlying areas. Young's 1886 revision to the plan also included a "hill line" running from Capodichino through Vomero and on to Posillipo. It showed considerable foresight, anticipating the hill communities that later were to spring up in those areas. The dispose of the material excavated along the Metro route led Young to propose using the material as fill along the picturesque Posillipo coast for a giant reclamation project. Young's plan was to have the land-fill cut by navigable canals of sea-water, thus creating artificial islands interconnected by bridges. Buildings and gardens on the islands would "give to our quarter the appearance of a tiny Venice," a 1500-meter extension up the Posillipo coast of the newly completed via Caracciolo, an avenue running along the sea from the historic section of Santa Lucia up to Mergellina along the old Royal Gardens of the Bourbon dynasty. For those who saw his idea as too romantic, he claimed it was based on solid economics: He thought the combination of a mini-Venice with the natural beauty of the Bay of Naples would put Naples virtually at the top of the world property market. The whole Venice area covered over four square kilometers; half for canals and streets and half for land to build on, much of which, however, would be gardens, keeping a favorable ratio of open spaces to buildings. The waste disposal system was well thought out, and the whole quarter rose 2,50 meters above the sea to keep dampness out of the dwellings. The main street, an extension of via Caracciolo, passed over the canals by a series of bridges. One long canal, Partenope, was crossed by seven secondary canals, all with outlets to the sea and to each other. The general effect was of smaller canals leading off of three larger ones which formed a letter "Y", the stem of which was the Grand Canal. Within the network was a large circular canal hub, the Venice-end of the canal-tunnel to be dug through Posillipo to Campi Flegrei. (Difficult, but not impossible—the Romans built a similar tunnel two thousand years ago, which may still be visited today.) Young's canal would be almost two kilometers long, and he was convinced that it would eventually prove to be the main connector between the west side of Naples and the new quarter in Campi Flegrei. Young's illustrations for the project are typically Victorian with their neo-Gothic buildings, bridges and towers. Campi Young's plans re-created Campi Flegrei, the area north of Naples beyond the Posillipo hill. The area focused around two central points and included the "Crystal Palace" and a number of hotels and beach establishments, private villas, exposition halls, and thermal bath facilities. Fuori Grotta, the area farthest from the sea, housed the metropolitana station, residences and the Crystal Palace. Other sections sloped gently down towards the sea and were given over to villas and gardens; the seaside area was a beach resort and included a zoo, shops and hotels. There were also two artificial lakes and a series of canals which joined the main one leading beneath Posillipo to the Venice Quarter. Young emphasized greenery and trees. The general impression was of a vast park with an occasional structure. Numerous parks and gardens allowed, according to Young, ample space for gymnastics and games. There was an English garden and an Italian one; small game abounded and Swiss chalets dotted the small hill known as S. Teresa. The whole area had a network of wood or metal bridges over the canals. Also, a narrow-gauge electric railway linked up to the metropolitana. The most interesting structure in the area was to be the Crystal Palace, on the shores of the Small Lake in Fuorigrotta and named for the Crystal Palace of the Universal Exposition in London in 1851. It would be a showpiece for Neapolitan Art, theater, exhibitions and concerts. Young, however, viewed the structure also as a means of educating the people. It was an all-purpose cultural establishment, so that "those who cannot travel or who are not widely read…may have a temple in which science can speak to the imagination…where they may learn how the human spirit has developed." Via Marina (the road now running along the main port of Naples) and the new via Caracciolo meant, for all practical purposes, that there were no longer any real beaches left in the city, itself. Young saw the bathing resort in Bagnoli as a way to give Neapolitans back something they had lost. He designed a bathing pier for Bagnoli: it formed three sides of a rectangle; the first leg ran 400 meters along the beach in Bagnoli opposite the tiny island of Nisida and provided dressing rooms. The other two sides were long double–decker piers in the water, letting you stroll along in the shade or take a dip, as you desired. The facility was to accommodate 20,000 persons a day. Such a plan necessarily called for a hotel to go along with it. After all, the resort was as much for tourists who would stay a while as it was for day trippers from Naples. Young wanted a hotel that combined the majesty of the hotels at English seaside resorts with the comfort of the resort hotels in America. It was to be on the shores of the Greater Lake. The most striking feature was the 50–meter high metal and glass dome, visible form the entire area. Inside, there were restaurants, thermal baths and a magnificent Winter Garden, tropical plants and all. Adjacent to the hotel and forming a symmetrical whole with it were two thermal cure baths. Young emphasized that although one of the facilities might serve the well-to-do clients in the Hotel Termine, he intended the second one for everyone, "for all social classes". Young saw Naples as becoming another London or Paris. "I see the city of my dreams, Naples, fifty years from now, risen majestic and enchanted in the most beautiful area in the world." Young's "fifty years from now" never worked out. The population explosion and the overwhelming influence of the private automobile (entirely unpredicted in the last century, even by those who foresaw flying machines!) have done much to confound the plans of visionaries, Young's included. Aside from those things, however, how practical was his idea? His critics say he showed a typically English lack of interest in the bonds that Neapolitans, historically, seem to have to have to the center of their city. He would, they say, have created a city with quarters for the rich, virtually ignoring the needs of the poor. He ignored the possibility of industry in the area. He made no plans for large numbers of working class, rather seeming to think that those who worked for a living would remain a fixed number and have to do only with managing tourism. His plans for a Venice Quarter and a leisure resort in Campi Flegrei amounted, they say, to little more than an anachronistic Victorian fantasy, instead of a realistic attempt to deal with the coming century. [Also see this related entry: Lamont Young's Revenge] Much of the criticism of the Venice idea was that it was too "poetic". Young, however, was always quick to point out the economic and practical advantages of his plan. He was convinced that his idea to decentralize the city by rapid transit was a good practical idea. Young was not optimistic about getting his plans approved; he felt there were vested interests working against him. In spite of his pessimism, he was given the go-ahead by the city council, contingent upon his ability to raise the money. And here the story ends. The building time was set for five years. Young was given six months to set up a private consortium to finance the project without state intervention. He had apparently been relying on English banking interests for support. The six months ran out without the necessary financial support and the city council granted an extension. It, too, ran out. Actually, there were two plans for rebuilding Naples. Young's plan lost out to the eventual winner, the risanamento, a draconian plan that gutted much of the city. The decision to choose that plan over Young's was made in the wake of the great cholera epidemic of 1884, a crisis that cried out for solution. The risanamento was more of a surgical solution than Young's, and who knows what role such metaphors play in making difficult choices such as how to rebuild a city? (It is also possible that there really were vested interests working against Young and for the risanamento.) Young's plans may well have been an anachronism, in the sense that they were too forward looking. Today, Naples is still in the midst of building a satisfactory underground railway line. Ironically, on the wall of one the stations of the new line there is a beautiful ceramic map displaying Young's original plans for a Naples Metro from 120 years ago (photo, top of page). The suburbs of Bagnoli and Campi Flegrei suffered the industrial blight of a steel mill and a cement factory for almost a century. Both of those enterprises have been abandoned and the area is now priming for an episode of non-industrial urban renewal on its own, based on the spectacular natural beauty of the bay. These plans include luring the next America's Cup regatta to the waters of Bagnoli. Meanwhile, the nearby tourist resorts of Sorrento and Capri thrive on the leisure time of tourists, a recent phenomenon that Young's critics could not have foreseen when they labelled his vision of a new Naples an anachronistic Victorian fantasy. It is a quaint piece of Victorian Gothic architecture set on the cliff of Pizzofalcone, the original cliff of Naples that overlooks the Castel dell'Ovo and the small harbor of Santa Lucia. When it was planned in the early years of the 20th–century, it really would have overlooked all that; however, by the time it went up (1922) construction along the seaside road led to the pitiful sight of a "castle" from which there was no view at all except of the splendid backs of hotels now directly in front of—and considerably higher than—the cliff. The castle was one of three or four such buildings put up by Young along the same unusual lines, highly criticized at the time as being not in keeping with the traditions of Neapolitan architecture. One of Young's other castle-like Victorian Gothic structures in the Chiaia part of town, above Parco Grifeo, even features an artificial crack high up on one of the towers (photo, directly above), meant to simulate great age or, perhaps, a lightning strike. All of these buildings would be at home on the covers of gloomy novels about moors, fog and frail heroines. The buildings are, however, charming, and the one on Pizzofalcone (photo, right) is now going to get one–and–a–half–million euros to undo the damage down by arson a few years ago; in addition, part of the grounds will be converted to a museum/exposition room that will inform visitors about this fascinating Neapolitan with the very English name. Here they will learn about Young's plan for the total rebuilding of the city (including the construction of an underground train line!) in the 1890s (a plan that lost out to the Risanamento—the The building shown directly above, Lamont Young's home on Pizzofalcone, has had a gloomy history, which, however, may now be taking a turn for the better. First of all, Young named the villa for his wife, Ebe Cazzani, and technically it is still called Villa Ebe. Second, Lamont Young, distraught at the turn his own life had taken (his plans for the city had been rejected, and his own view of the sea from the historic height of Greek Naples was now closed to him forever by block after block of new high-rise hotels thrown up by the risanamento—in short, he was a failure) committed suicide by pistol-shot in the villa. The premises decayed over the decades, somehow survived WWII but continued to decay. The arson attempt to destroy the premises in 2000 was serious and was almost the death knell for Villa Ebe. Yet, on the verge of demolition, it was saved: good-hearted volunteers, private organizations and the city got together to save it. For the last two years, work has been going on to restore "The Gardens of Villa Ebe," to restore the interior and turn it into a tribute to its architect. The practical but quaint (if that is the word!) (pictured, above left) switch-back ramp leading up to the villa has already been renamed the rampe Lamont Young (number 8 on this map). God, I hope they don't screw this one up. career of architect Lamont Young. You will gather that none of Young’s grandiose plans from the 1880s—not the metropolitana, not the Venice Quarter, not the grand seaside resort in Bagnoli—none of that came to fruition. It all shattered against the risanamento, the great and drastic urban renewal of the city in the face of the terrible cholera epidemics of the 1880s. At best, we have handed down from Lamont Young, a few individual buildings, the most impressive of which is the Aselmeyer Castle on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele (C.VE), in these photos. Young had to give up on his sweeping plans to rebuild entire sections of the city once it became clear that the city council was going ahead with the risanamento. He, thus, concentrated his efforts on putting up some individual buildings that still stand today. In 1895, Young acquired the rights to build on sections of the C.VE. (At the time, that street was almost bucolic and nothing like the mass of buildings you see today.) Even then, his plans reached well beyond what actually wound up being done. For example, he had come into possession of the Villa Lucia in the Floridiana park in the Vomero section, high above the C.VE. He proposed joining that property to the C.VE with an elevator: you would have his Villa Santa Lucia at the top and a new hotel, which he proposed to build, at the bottom. After all was said and done, he had to give up his plans for the new hotel (although construction was partially completed and even today serves as a conference and reception hall. (It is named for one “Bertolini,” who acquired the building from Young in the early 1900s.) Young had to settle for simply putting up as his own residence on the C.VE, the building seen in these photos. It was built in 1902 and sold two years later to banker, Carlo Aselmeyer, whose name the building still bears. (More correctly, the name of the building is Castello Grifeo dei Principi di Partanna.) Young moved away to the small isle of Gaiola on the Posillipo coast. Architecturally, English Gothic (“Dracula Victorian,” as they say) as are most of Young’s other works. (An exception is the Neo-Renaissance Grenoble Institute on via Crispi.) That was the greatest criticism levelled against him—his buildings don't look as if they belong in Naples. (Well, that was the second greatest criticism; the big one was that his sense of “city” was not Neapolitan; it involved the new concept of “urbanization” —moving people out of the center of town (using his never-to-be-built metropolitans as the primary people mover). That may not have been Neapolitan, but that is, however, what eventually happened, anyway, with the invention of the automobile, with or without Lamont Young.) A fair criticism would be that he thought Naples could eventually live from tourism. New 20th-century industry played no role in his thinking. In any event, the Aselmeyer Castle still exists but has been kept up only marginally at times. It has long since been sub-divided into many different apartments and suffers from the same problem that all condominiums do in Naples: you can’t get everyone to agree on major repairs. The building has also been architecturally defaced by two additions on either side of the main entrance: cream-colored, smooth blocks of junk not in keeping with the rough-hewn stone of the rest of the building. to portal for architecture and urban planning It is not surprising that Mt. Vesuvius is a common symbol of Naples. There have been so many paintings and photos of " 'a muntagna" over the years, it's almost as if artists and weekend snapshooters were engaging in ritual propitiation. You know: "If we feed Your ego enough with all this art, maybe You won't explode again. Very sincerely, we remain Your faithful servants in Pompei." Who knows. I am fascinated by stylized graphics of Vesuvius. I have no idea how many there have been over the years, but a recent copy of the International Journal of Semiotics, Statistics and Ouija Boards informs me, reliably, that "there are really a lot" of such graphics done by advertisers, artists, school children and bored doodlers to depict Vesuvius. They range from Andy Warhol's famous-for 15 minutes, anyway-explosion of color (at the top of this page) to the works of anonymous designers churning out ads. (A few of those are on the right, and there is anothervery good one here.) Other symbols are a bit harder to come by. Dangerous, even. The 30-foot-high ceilings of the Royal Palace could only have been painted and ornamented by giraffes. (Indeed, it is my understanding that the revolutions of 1820 and 1848 in Naples could have been avoided if only the despotic rulers of the kingdom had realized they were spending too much money on giraffes and not enough on guns and butter.) Anyway, walking around said Royal Palace staring at said ceilings is a very good way to fall down the magnificent Bourbon staircase, but also a good way to notice a splendid example of the triskelion, or triskele. The triskelion is a symbol formed by three of almost anything conjoined and radiating from the center-triangles, commas, lines, circles, tear or water drops, trombone slides, arms, or legs. Such symbols are very widespread in human cultures and are found all the way from Celtic mythology to Buddhist art. The one in the Royal Palace (photo, above) -with stylized human legs radiating from the center-is common in ancient Greek culture. The symbol is found on Greek coins and even earlier Mycenean pottery. In the palace, the triskelion is there as a symbol of Sicily, representing the claim of the Bourbon monarchy to rule the "Kingdom of the Two Sicilies," a term applied on and off to the southern half of the Italian peninsula since the 1400s-Palermo, of course, being the first Sicily and, then, Naples the second. As a symbol of Sicily, the triskelion (meaning "three legs" in Greek) goes back to the existence of Sicily as part of Magna Grecia, the colonial extension of Greece beyond the Aegean. Pliny-either the Elder, the Younger, or the One in Middle-says the use of the triskelion to represent ancient Trinacria (an earlier name for Sicily)-is symbolic of the triangular shape of the island, defined by three distinct capes, equidistant one from the other. (The modern names: Cape Peloro, at the straits of Messina; Cape Passero, at the southern tip; and Cape Lilibeo, at Marsala in the west.) On that note, the same lovely person, Laura, who brought the triskelion on the ceiling to my attention in the first place (as she was falling down the stairs) now tells me that I don't know if that part about not using the north star convinces me, but as stories go, it's a good one! In any event, in the center of most depictions of the Sicilian triskelion is a human face, that of the Medusa, one of the aspects of the goddess Athena, patron saint of the island. The triskelion appealed to the Bourbons of Naples primarily because it was NOT a Bourbon symbol; it was classical Greek and, as such, lent historical weight to the claim of unity of Sicily and mainland. (The keen-eyed will noticed a smaller, secondary triskelion within the first, radiating out from between the legs. They appear to be stalks of wheat. The harvest? Fertility? Phallic symbols? All of those? Guess away.) I have not scoured the city on a great triskelion hunt, but I can't help but notice that in everyday places there are designs that fit at least the general description of "three of almost anything conjoined and radiating from the center," such as the leaf design (photo, right) on the facade of the Church of the Redeemer on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Naples. Also, in the category of Two Symbols for the Price of One is the red amulet (bottom, left) that is either (1) a single curved corno (animal horn), representing the sexual vigor implied in the phallic symbol or (2) a serpent, with a possible connection to ancient ophiolatry (serpent worship). It might be both, which makes it all the more interesting, especially since there is now a third possibility. Vendors of the famous peperoncini-small Calabrian red peppers-stylize the ads for their red-hot little veggie (Capsicum frutescens perenne ) such that it resembles the amulet. The symbolism is enough to take your breath away. The peppers will do that, too. Pulcinella, of course, the Neapolitan masked figure from the medieval tradition of the Commedia dell'Arte is the personage who most symbolizes Naples. There is a separate entry on him here.) Close These churches were certainly not "miscellaneous" to the people who built them, nor to those who have frequented them over the centuries in Naples. It's just that a separate item about each church in Naples would denude the cyberforests of the world. These, then, are the first entries of a potentially very long series noting the presence of the many small or less noticed churches in a city where-in 1700-ten percent of the population belonged to the clergy. Santa Caterina a Formiello is at the extreme eastern end of the old historic center of the city, near the old eastern wall of the city and the gate called Porta Capuana. It was founded about 1510, completed in 1593, and dedicated to the virgin martyr of Alexandria. It constituted an important part of an ancient monastery that originally belonged to the Celestine order and which passed to the Dominican fathers after 1498. They kept it until the 19th century, when the monastic premises were closed and used as a wool factory. Exceptional frescoes by Luigi Garzi from 1685 and various 16th century funeral monuments are kept within the church. The church has a single-aisle Latin cross interior covered by a barrel vault with five chapels on either side. San Giovanni a Carbonara is at the northern end of via Carbonara, just outside what used to be the eastern wall of the old city. The name carbonara (meaning "coal-carrier") was given to this site allocated for the collection and burning of refuse outside the city walls in the Middle Ages. The monastery/ church complex of San Giovanni, itself, was founded by Augustinians in 1343. The church was completed in 1418 under King Ladislaus of Durazzo, who turned the church into a Pantheon-like tribute to the last of the Angevin rulers of Naples. It was expanded over the course of the following three centuries and contains sculptures and artwork of considerable interest, including the chapels of Caracciolo del Sole and Caracciolo di Vico. Santa Caterina a Chiaia (photo left) is also known as Santa Caterina martire) and is near Piazza dei Martiri in the western, Chiaia section of the city. The church was built originally as a small family chapel by the Forti family and then ceded to the Franciscan order, which expanded it by 1600. The church that ones sees today, however, is the result of a series of remodelings, including one as late as 1732 in the wake of a serious earthquake in that year. The facade is characterized by a representation of the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. The main entrance is marked by a plaque commemorating a restoration of the facade in 1904. Art work in the interior is mostly dedicated to the life of Saint Catherine, including a prominent dome display by Gustavo Girosi from 1916. The New Church of Santa Maria of Jerusalem -also known as the Church of the Thirty-Three is hidden away on via Pisanelli, a small street in the historic center of Naples. It was built in the second half of the 16th century and later demolished to make place for the present one, built at a right angle to the earlier church. Inside, there is stucco decoration and an 18th-century majolica floor. The small convent annexed to the church became, in 1539, home to a group of cloistered Capuchin sisters. The premises still serve that purpose. The church was called Thirty Three from the number of sisters who could be housed there, with a clear reference to the age of Christ at the time of the Crucifixion. (The photo on the right is as about as close as you're going to get. When they say "cloistered," they're not kidding, and when I say "hidden away", I mean invisible. A stealth nunnery.) Santa Teresa a Chiaia is one of the many churches in Naples built by Cosimo Fanzago, the greatest architect of the Neapolitan Baroque. The church is two blocks in from the Villa Comunale in the western part of Naples. The original church and monastery on this site were from 1625 and belonged to the Carmelite Order. At the time, the area inland from the sea, in back of the string of seaside Spanish villas, was wooded and relatively bucolic. In the years between 1650 and 1664, a new complex was built by Fanzago, and it was quite large, occupying much of the land around the church that one sees today. The monastery was closed in the 1860s and various episodes of urban renewal-and in some cases, urban blight-have truncated the original complex such that, of the original premises that included gardens and such, only the church remains. Some care has been taken, however, to keep it looking the way it did when it was built. The facade is an excellent example of the Neapolitan Baroque. Within the church, there are significant examples of art work by Luca Giordano. San Giuseppe dei Ruffi is in the historic center of the city, one block north of the Cathedral of Naples at the intersection of via dei Tribunali and via Duomo. The site, itself, was originally the location of the ancient monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli, closed in the 1500s. In 1611 it was acquired by the Ruffo family as a site for a new convent. Restructuring the earlier premises was done to a design by Dionisio Lazzari; the work was begun in 1669 and the new convent was inaugurated in 1682, the work completed by Lazzari's student, Giovan Domenico Vinaccia. The Ruffo family retained the premises until 1828 when it was given over to sisters of the Sacramentine order, who retain it to this day. Much of the ornamentation in the church was not completed until the early 1770's. Obviously, San Giuseppe dei Ruffi has severe competition one block away at the Cathedral; nevertheless, the interior of the church is a spectacular example of the Neapolitan Baroque and Rococo. Like many of the nearby buildings along the same north-south axis, the original complex was truncated by the construction of via Duomo, the broad, straight road that now connects Corso Umberto in the south to via Foria on the northern side of the historic center. That construction was part of the Risanamento, the urban renewal of Naples in the late 1800s. San Pasquale. The church and adjacent monastery of San Pasquale are one short block to the north of the Villa Comunale and Riviera di Chiaia on San Pasquale square, between Piazza Vittoria and Mergellina. The complex goes back to 1749 when Charles III of Bourbon and his consort, Maria Amalia, had it built in thanks for having been blessed with a male heir to the throne. Church and monastery were given to the Fathers of Alcantarini Leccesi. The monastery was closed by the government of the new nation state of Italy in December of 1866. The premises contain significant art work of Antonio Sarnelli and Giacinto Diano. Santa Maria degli Angeli delle Croci is mentioned elsewhere in this encyclopedia, since the courtyard and monastery of the original vast complex now house the Department of Veterinary Medicine of the university if Naples. The church, itself, remains open as such; the facade looks down from the end of via Michele Tenore, the street that runs along the west side of the large Botanical Garden in Naples. (The odd term delle Croci [of the crosses] in the name of the church derives from the crosses that used to be situated along the street leading up to the church.) Those crosses were taken down in the wake of street construction in the area in the mid-1800s, at which time, the double stairway was added to the entrance. The church was started in 1581 by the Franciscan order; the facade is "Serlian" (from Sebastiano Serlio, the Italian Mannerist architect and author of the influential treatise, I sette libri dell'architettura)-that is, it presents a central arch between two prominent architrave elements. The statue of St. Francis above the entrance was long attributed to Cosimo Fanzago but may actually be by father Crisanto Gagliucci, who is said to have sculpted it originally for the church of Santa Maria la Nova. If that is true, the relocation is due to the light fingers of Fra Giovanni da Napoli (d. 1648), the powerful head of the order at the time, who is said to have helped himself to as much of the statuary and silverware from Franciscan churches throughout the area in order to decorate the new church. If it is not true, then Fanzago gets credit for the statue as he does for most of the rest of the church. Early comments on the church was that it had a "happy" look to it, which may account for the fact that it was a popular place for noble and even viceregal weddings. The courtyard contains a remarkable series of frescoes by Belisario Corenzio arrayed along the 36 arches of the arcade. Taken together, they are a study of Neapolitan nobility of the 16th century; each section displays an heraldic crest and a painting of the appropriate duke, count or prince. The murals were among Corenzio's last works. In his day, he was a leading muralist in Naples and like his contemporary, Fanzago, his works were spread throughout the city. The church of Sant'Anna dei Lombardi (the somber building on the left in this photo) was originally known as Santa Maria di Monteoliveto (Mount of Olives). It is the single remaining religious remnant of what was once the Mount of Olives monastery, founded in 1411. The entire complex was at one time one of the largest monasteries in Italy. Urban renewal from the 1930s literally built around the old monastery, leaving much of the original structure standing in the center. At the east end, the church, itself, is still in use, but the adjacent monastery is now the Pastrengo barracks of the Carabinieri (Italian national police force). Art within the church and the facade, itself, display the influence of the Florentine Renaissance. Within the church are the monument tomb of Maria d'Aragona, the tomb of architect Domenico Fontana, and paintings by Giorgio Vasari and Pedro Rubiales. It is also home to a group sculpture in terracotta from 1492 by Guido Mazzoni of the Lament over the Dead Christ. The church once housed three paintings by Caravaggio: St. Francis in Meditation, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, and Resurrection; but they were destroyed in the earthquake of 1805. The original design of the church was greatly modified in the 1600s by architect Gian Battista Cavagna, and the church had to be restored after the bombings of WWII. As of February 2009, the church is again open to visitors. The Maria dell'Aiuto [Saint Mary of Eternal Help or of Succour] is on a small east-west street of that name about 150 yards into the old city across the street (via Monteoliveto) from the east side of the main post office. It is just past the better-known church of Santa Maria la Nova. The architect was Dionisio Lazzari [see Lazzari, Dionisio(1) (2)] and, in its newly restored condition (after years of being closed), the church may be appreciated for the absolute gem of the Neapolitan Baroque that it was. The historian Celano (writing when the church was new) recounts what has become folklore surrounding the origins of the church-that two children in 1635 posted their own crude drawing of the Blessed Virgin in a window of a lower floor of what was then the Palazzo Pappacoda (not to be confused with a church of a similar name) and collected donations. When they had collected enough, they hired a real artist to do his own rendition on canvas-again to solicit donations. The process gained speed and by the time of the great plague of 1656, a small chapel had been founded and then a church-on the site of the original Pappacoda building and dedicated to Our Lady of Succour. In an age in which such concrete manifestations of faith were held to be protection from earthquakes, eruptions of Vesuvius and pestilence, not only churches arose, but also the three so-called "plague columns"-or votive spires-of Naples. See (1) (2). The church is in the design of a Greek cross-that is, a central nave with a transept of equal length as the nave; it has a central dome. A partial inventory of the art works contained in the church includes: -three paintings by Gaspare Traversi dated 1749: The Nativity, The Annunciation, and the Ascension of the Virgin; -the monument tomb of Gennaro Acamparo by Francesco Pagano from 1738; -also by Pagano, the angels that support the candelabra of the main altar; -the painting of The Virgin of Succour by Giuseppe Farina; -The Flight of Joseph by Nicola Malincolico; -the side ovals of The Archangel Michael by Giacinto Diano. The restoration of Santa Maria dell'Aiuto has been spectacularly successful. The Maria della Sapienza is one of the large, old churches in Naples that no one notices. It is on via Costantinopoli near Piazza Bellini, an area greatly affected by the risanamento, the urban renewal of the city in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Specifically, the church and convent were affected by the construction of the nearby First Polyclinic Hospital and medical school of the University of Naples, which required the demolition of some nearby buildings. After the unification of Italy, it was common practice in Naples to convert old monasteries to secular use, usually leaving the adjacent churches intact. (Sometimes they didn't, as in the case of the church of Croce di Lucca, the old convent of which was adjacent on the south to the convent of S.M. della Sapienza.) convent was demolished, but the church was left standing; yet, it has been closed for many years and is badly in need of restoration. There was a convent on the site in 1519, quite early in the period of the Spanish vice-realm in Naples. The unusual name, Sapienza (knowledge) derives from what was on the property before that: a shelter for poor students, sponsored by Oliviero Carafa (1430-1511), from one of the best-known families in medieval and Renaissance Naples. He was an Italian cardinal, the archbishop of Naples, friend of popes (and would-be Pope, himself), diplomat and great intellectual patron of Renaissance arts. (He is, for better or worse, remembered today for his opposition to Michelangelo's use of nude figures in the fresco of The Last Judgement.) The name Sapienza stayed with the premises when the convent was built. The later configuration of S.M. della Sapienza comes from a complete rebuilding done between 1625 and 1670. Some sources claim that the remake was the idea of Francesco Grimaldi (1543-1613), whose work in Naples on the Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro in the cathedral and Santa Maria degli Angeli a Pizzofalcone is well-documented. That is possible, but he died before real work had even begun; thus, the premises took their newer form through the work of two other architects, primarily Giovan Giacomo di Conforto and Orazio Gisolfo. Most sources attribute the facade to Cosimo Fanzago, the greatest Neapolitan architect of the time. The interior was noteworthy for the presence of frescoes by Belisario Corenzio (c. 1558 - 1643) and paintings by Giovanni Ricca, Domenico Gargiulo (aka Micco Spadaro), and Andrea Vaccaro, among others. The paintings have long since been removed from the decaying church for safekeeping. The basilica of San Gennaro extra moenia ("beyond the walls") was the first church in Naples named for San Gennaro, the patron saint of the city. The origins are probably in the 4th century, that is, at the time that the mortal remains of the martyred saint were moved to the adjacent catacombs at the foot of the Capodimonte hill, well to the north of the ancient city walls. The tomb of San Gennaro with this adjacent church was an important site of worship in the early centuries of Christianity in Naples. The site went into severe decline when the Longobards invaded Naples in 831 and removed the remains of the saint to Benevento. A short time later, in 872, the Benedictine order started construction at the site of a large monastery dedicated to Saints Gennaro and Agrippino (the patron saint of Naples before San Gennaro). They rebuilt the basilica and incorporated it into the north end of the monastery, making the entire structure well over 200 meters long. For hundreds of years, the monastery continued to use the nearby catacombs as a cemetery. In the 1400s, the monastery premises were converted to a hospital; it served in that capacity during the plague of 1479 and subsequent outbreaks. In the 1600s the facility also served as a kind of poorhouse, caring for the indigent and not just the sick, acquiring the name of San Gennaro dei Poveri (of the poor). It is still an important medical facility in Naples. The basilica is now on hospital premises and is more correctly called the Basilica di San Gennaro dei poveri. (See also the general entry on the catacombs.) Close Again, here are some churches and ex-monasteries scattered throughout various quarters of Naples. And again, they are no less interesting or worthwhile for their inclusion under this "miscellaneous" rubric. The church and adjacent monastery of the Spirito Santo are near the northwest corner of the old historic city on via Roma (also known by the original Spanish name of via Toledo). The refurbished monastery now houses the architecture department of the University of Naples. (The photo, left, is in the courtyard of those premises. The photo of the courtyard, right, is from 1890-1900.) The church and monastery got off to a false start, so to speak, in 1562, when Pope Pius IV gave the Dominican order the go-ahead for a plan to build a "conservatory" (meaning, here, "shelter") for prostitutes, their children, and the poor, in general. The early construction was demolished under viceroy Alcale in order to expand the main road leading north out of the city. New construction at the present site began, however, soon thereafter and was generally complete by 1600 although additional construction continued well into the 1700s. At one time or another, great Neapolitan architects such as Ferdinando Fuga and Luigi Vanvitelli contributed to the final product. Many of the paintings and works in marble commissioned for the original complex are still preserved within the church. The premises served not only to "conserve" the destitute, but to teach them a trade, one of which was music; the use of "conservatory" to mean "music school" stems from this usage at this and similar institutions in Naples. The ex-monastery of Sant'Andrea Dame, which today is part of the University of Naples School of Medicine, was founded in 1583 to house the order of Augustine hermits. The church interior, with a single aisle and no transept, preserves its late-16th-century layout; the presbytery displays rich marble wall decorations created by the Ghetto brothers in the last quarter of the 17th century, after a design of Giovanni Domenico Vinaccia. The building is almost at the top of the northwest height of the historic city of Greco-Roman Neapolis and is not far from presumed site of the ancient Greek acropolis. The conversion of this site to a medical building was part of the massive construction in the early 1900s to convert the quarter into a modern hospital zone with medical school. This entailed tearing down a number of ancient buildings to erect the new hospital and the incorporation of other old structures, including Sant'Andre delle Dame, into the hospital facilities. The courtyard is open from the main entrance and may be visited. Santa founded under the name of Santa Maria della Mercede by a pious association set up in 1548 to redeem the Christians captured by the Muslims. ("Saracen" raids were common in those days along the shores of the kingdom.) The church was renovated in the 18th century following the latest dictates of the Neapolitan rococo; the church is characterized by the magnificent, almost theatrical design of the facade by architect Ferdinando San Felice. It was here that Alfonso Maria de Liguori, future saint and celebrated author of Canti di Natale (Christmas Songs) took the vows to enter the priesthood. The location is fitting since the church is adjacent to the music conservatory and at the top of the street, via San Sebastiano, long known for the presence of a great number of music shops. (There is a lovely, active monastery and church on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius named for Liguori.) [There is an historical display on the premises of the Bank if Naples about S.M.della Redenzione dei Captivi. See this link for the text of that display.] San Giuseppe a Chiaia is on the street named Riviera di Chiaia, now the inner road running along the north side of the long public park, the Villa Comunale. When the church was built, however, in the early 1600s, it was seaside property, the park being a much later addition to Neapolitan topography. The original chapel was built by Father Flaminio Magnato as a Jesuit convalescent home. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Naples it became a nautical school, and in 1817, King Ferdinand I had it converted into a home for the blind. It is again a church. According to historian Vittorio Gleijeses, it once housed a religious relic that is the source of an amusing Neapoplitan expression. [Further mention of this church here.] [Also, there is a longer article on this church by Selene Salvi here.] Santa church about halfway along the length of the street named Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. That street is one of the main east-west thoroughfares in Naples and starts at Piedigrotta in the west (where the Mergellina train station now stands), runs up the hill and then east all the way to a point above the National museum, a distance of about two km. The road was built in the mid-1800s, so when this church was built--in the late 1500s--the area was truly bucolic, set, as it is, below the height of San Martino. The church was commissioned by Brother Filippo da Perugia and the original architect was Giovan Battista Cavagna. The buildings adjacent to the church formed part of the original monastic complex, which was then expanded between 1634 and 1656. The monastery was closed in the late 1700s and for a while served as a prison, housing inmates jailed in the wake of the 1799 insurrection that led to the short-lived Neapolitan Republic as well as prisoners arrested after the turmoil of the 1848 revolts. The original plan for the main street in front of the church called for major road-straightening, a bridge, and demolition of some of the nearby buildings, none of which came to fruition; thus, the high double stairway entrance to the church sits directly on a curve. In the form that one sees it today, the stairway was rebuilt in 1930. Santa Maria di Montecalvario is in the heart of the Spanish Quarters of Naples. The church was founded in 1560 with a donation by the Neapolitan noblewoman Ilaria d'Apuzzo. It was consecrated as a Franciscan establishment in 1574. This church, too, was originally part of a monastic complex. The monastery was one of the many that were closed in Naples during the brief French rule of the kingdom in the early 1800s. For some years it served as a barracks. The church has been maintained since 1923 by fathers of the Mercedari Order. Among the many art works of interest in the church are some attributed to Giacomo di Cosenza, but, in any event, to the school responsible for introducing into the Kingdom of Naples in the 1520s the modern styles of Raffaello and Michelangelo. Chiesa del Cenacolo (Church of the Last Supper) is on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, a short distance from Santa Maria Apparente (above). As churches go in Naples, it is relatively recent; it stems from the early 1800s. It was originally the chapel in a rest home for the elderly, the structure that surrounds this small church on both sides and which has since been converted to other uses. The Cenacolo is the first church in Naples run by the laity. Sant' Efremo Vecchio is another of the many churches in the Sanite area of Naples. This church, too, is the eponym for the street; it leads away from the school of Veterinary Medicine (itself a converted monastery, that of the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli alle Croci).The name Efremo is a corruption of Efebo, a third-century bishop buried in the nearby catacombs. In the 1200s his remains were then deposited in a church cut into the rock, itself, and then, in 1539, the Capucin order was given the property and built the first monastery in the province. The present configuration of the premises is due to a series of restorations, one in the 1720s, another in the 1770s and one in the 1840s. After the closing of monastic orders in the wake of the unification of Italy in 1861, the order again came into possession of the property in 1887. The majolica tile inlays at the entrance are from the 1830s and are by Tommaso Bruno. The main altar is from the 1773 and is by Michele Salemme. The church does contain, however, remnants of sculpture done much earlier, before any of the more modern restorations. The rather well-known sculpture of The Reclining Bishop is, in fact, from the mid-1500s. It is now positioned behind the altar, but the speculation is that it was originally a tomb marker at another location and that it was moved inside when the saint's remains were transferred. The nearby catacombs of Sant' Efremo Vecchio, although open occasionally for visits, have presented archaeologists with a number of as yet unresolved questions, most of these having to do with the relatively late location and identification of the catacombs-1931. Close SanPietro Martire. The main body of this ex-monastery now houses departments of the Federico II University of Naples. The origins of San Pietro Martire go back to the Angevin dynasty in Naples when Charles II of Anjou authorized the construction of a new Dominican basilica. Construction was begun in 1294. (At the time, the area was already a maze of tight alleyways close to the port; the layout of the area that one sees today was greatly changed by the urban rebuilding, the Risanamento, of the late 1800s.) Our Lady of Mercy. (A.k.a. the Church of Sant'Orsola.) The presence of the Spanish Mercedarian order is part of the consolidation of the Spanish monarchy in the vice-realm of Naples in the 1500s. This church/monastery is at the western end of via Chiaia (now a pedestrian thoroughfare), a road that, indeed, was once the main way to get from the area around the Royal palace to the newer Spanish expansions to the west along the sea front. (Actually, it still is the easiest way if you don't mind a short walk.) The church is on the site of an earlier Chapel of St. Orsola from the 1400s; construction to incorporate that chapel into the newer church started in the late 1500s. The church is not particularly conspicuous from the front as it is abutted on both sides by other buildings. Like many church/monasteries in Naples, it was closed under the French in the early 1800s, but later reopened. It underwent extensive restoration in the 1850s. Ten years later, the unification of Italy forced the closure of virtually all monasteries in Italy. In 1874, the former monastic premises were sold and eventually converted into the Sannazzaro Theater, still operating. The adjacent church stayed a church and remains essentially what one sees today. Santa Maria delle Grazie is below the Corso Vittorio Emanuele at a small square called Piazza Mondragone, a name historically applied to the entire premises that contain the small church: il Retiro di Mondragone, the Mondragone Retreat. The entire complex was originally a "conservatory", in the early non-musical use of the word to mean a shelter, a place where widows and destitute women might be cared for. The complex was founded in 1653 by Elena Aldobrandini, countess of Mondragone. Construction of the church, itself, was somewhat later than the shelter; the church is from 1715. Urbanization and subdivision of the area has reduced Santa Maria della Grazie to a rather sorry state. For a long time, it was simply closed but has recently been at least partially restored. It is considered an outstanding example of late Baroque art and architecture in Naples. Santa Maria Assunta di Bellavista. It is difficult to say which church in Naples has the best view of the bay. This one has to be high on anyone's list. It is way out of town at Piazza San Luigi, on the long main road, via Posillipo, that winds west away from Mergellina and up the hill towards Cape Posillipo. (The photo, right, was taken from the road that runs down to the sea, the cape and villa Volpicelli.) From the long monastery-like facade, one is tempted to compare this church to the old Spanish buildings in downtown Naples-maybe spectacularly restored. Not so; in fact, from the side or above, you see that the building is not a gigantic monastic block, but simply a very long facade fronting a relatively shallow building. It was built in only 4 years, beginning in 1860 on land granted by Francis II (the last king of Naples) to two sisters of the Capece Minutolo family. The church, itself, is only the central portion of the building. The two wings were meant to house, respectively, a school and shelter for the poor on one side and dwellings on the other. The clean neo-Gothic facade, thus, is not a restoration, but the original design. Santa Maria della Pazienza is commonly called the "Cesarea", after Annibale Cesareo, the royal secretary responsible in 1602 for the construction of what was then a church plus major hospital. It is located about halfway up the Vomero hill above the archaeological museum and accessible from below by the main road up, via Salvator Rosa. It is today just above the intersection of that street and Corso Vittorio Emanuele (a major east-west road which did not exist until the mid-1800s). The "Cesarea" was, at the time it was built, well outside of town. Originally, the church and hospital were under the direct administration of the Holy See. The hospital was closed in the late 1800s under a general move towards secularization of health-care facilities in Naples, and the administration of the church was transferred to the archbishopric of Naples. Santa Maria del Parto (Birth) overlooks the small port of Mergellina and is quite easy to "underlook" if you are busy with the daily portside routine. Yet, the church is very old and very historic. It was founded by the great Neapolitan poet Iaccopo Sannazzaro on land he obtained in 1497 from Frederick II of Aragon. The king also gave Sannazzaro a stipend; thus, the poet spent the last years of his life working on his church and his poem, De partu Virginis, at the same time. Although the entire complex has been divided and subdivided over the years, it is evident that the whole affair was once a single unit and was much bigger than the quaint church on top (photo). The original plans called for a two-level complex-the church that you see today on top and another church dug in the tufaceous cliff face below at a point where there was a cave that contained a well-known wooden presepe (manger scene) by Giovanni da Nola. The premises also included a monastery, using part of an earlier structure that had been on the site from the time of the Angevin dynasty. The first church was finished in good order, but the second part had some problems in the early 1500s due to a plague epidemic that forced Sannazzaro to leave Naples. Also, the French and Spanish were still fighting for control of the area; thus, at one point in the 1520s, the new church was converted into a military fortification. Before his death, Sannazzaro managed to get the property back, and heirs finished the project. Later, the monastery part was closed by the French in the early 1800s and, for a while, those premises became the private property of the Neapolitan opera impresario, Domenico Barbaia. The church of Santa Teresa degli Scalzi (aka Santa Teresa al Museo or Madre di Dio) is the eponym for the street on which it is located, just around the corner to the north of the National Archaeological Museum. The broad street was the new thoroughfare built by the French under Murat in the early 1800s to connect the historic center of the city with the royal palace of Capodimonte. In spite of the historical importance of the church and the great number of art works contained on the premises, it is almost never open to be visited. The interior of the church is a treasure trove, with works by painters Paolo de Matteis and Battistello Caracciolo and the sculptor Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, among many others. Also, the church holds a painting of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII. It is by Giacomo Colombo and is from 1715, the era of the brief Austrian Hapsburg vice-realm in Naples. The chapel of St. Teresa within the church was designed by Cosimo Fanzago and is considered relevant in the history of Neapolitan Baroque art S.M. degli Scalzi was built between 1604 and 1612 and was the first church and monastery of the Discalced ("barefoot") Carmelite Order in Naples. The founders were Carmelite monks from Spain, followers of St. Teresa of cvila. The facade of S.M. of St. Teresa and one of St. John of the Cross; the facade is from 1652 and is the work of Fanzago. [There is a seperate entry on the Ancient (Calced) Carmelite Order.] When religious orders were closed in 1808, some of the furnishings within the church were moved elsewhere to conserve them as cultural artifacts. In this case, the original altar, built by the Neapolitan sculptor, Dionisio royal palace, where it resides today. The double stairway is the result of later construction in the 1830s after the church was reopened. The ex-monastic premises today house an Industry and Crafts Institute for the Blind. San Carlo all' Arena. This church with the strange name is located on the north side of via Foria, just east of Piazza Cavour, and is relatively late in the history of Neapolitan church building. The general layout of the building is attributed to the Dominican priest/architect Fra Nuvolo (Vincenzo de Nuvola, 1570-1643), but the church was not inaugurated until 1700 with work on the facade continuing as late as 1756. This is actually a rebuilt version of another church of the same name somewhat to the west of the present site; that church was opened in 1602 and is no longer standing. The name, itself, "Arena" means "sand" and refers to the former presence of a rain-fed river that ran along what is now via Foria, all presence of which has now vanished; the last witness to that presence, the nearby bridge of Sant'Antonio abate, was demolished in 1868. The church was home to the Cistercian order, which, however, had to abandon the premises in 1792 to make room for a shelter ("conservatorio"), coming of the anti-clericalism of the short-lived Neapolitan Republic of 1799 and then of the longer-lived French rule under Murat at the beginning of the 1800s, the premises were used as a store-house; many of the art works contained in the church and monastery were lost. Thanks to the work of the Cistercian order during the cholera outbreak of 1836, they were again given the property. After the unification of Italy, the order was suppressed. The ex-monastic premises are today occupied by public buildings. The church today still contains significant art work and sculpture. From its location, size and appearance, the church of Saints one of those many 16th -and-17th-century Spanish churches just below it in the Chiaia section of town, just above the western end of the Villa Comunale. Actually, it is more recent and consequently enjoyed a much shorter life as the church/convent it was intended to be. There had been an earlier royal villa of sorts on the property when it was acquired by members of the Discalced Carmelite order in 1747. Ten years later, a central church was added (photo) at the behest of the monarch, Charles III. Tradition likes to attribute the conversion and subsequent building on the premises to architect Angelo Carasale, who had just completed the San Carlo Theater; however, most sources now claim that the architect is unknown but, whoever he was, he owed a lot to Antonio Domenico Vaccaro. The church is on the steep street, Arco Mirelli, about halfway up between piazza della Repubblica at sea-level and the long east-west road, Corso Vittorio Emanuele. If you step back from the front of the building and can keep from rolling down the hill, you will see just how large it is. In that respect, it has something in common with the earlier Spanish monasteries and convents. All convents and monasteries were closed by the French in the early 1800s and again after the unification of Italy in 1861; more recently, the former convent of Saints Giovanni e Teresa was converted to secular use as part of the Loreto Crispi hospital. The interior of the church contains works by sculptor Manuel Pacecho and paintings by Giuseppe Bonito (1707-89) and Francesco de Mura (1696-1782). Bonito and de Mura were both students of Solimena, and, interestingly, Bonito is better known for his popular renditions of Neapolitan life than for religious works. The church of Santa is on the small east-west street of that name about 150 yards into the old city across the street (via Monteoliveto) from the east side of the main post office. It is just past the better-known church of Santa Maria la Nova. The Lazzari [-- index 'L'] and, in its newly restored condition (after years of being closed), the church may be appreciated for the absolute gem of the Neapolitan Baroque that it was. The historian Celano (writing when the church was new) recounts what has become folklore surrounding the origins of the church-that two children in 1635 posted their own crude drawing of the Blessed Virgin in a window of a lower floor of what was then the Palazzo Pappacoda (not to be confused with a church of the same name) and collected donations. When they had collected enough, they hired a real artist to do his own rendition on canvas-again to solicit donations. The process gained speed and by the time of the great plague of 1656, a small chapel had been founded and then a church-on the site of the original Pappacoda building-dedicated to Our Lady of Succour. (In an age in which such concrete manifestations of faith were held to be protection from earthquakes, eruptions of Vesuvius and pestilence, not only churches arose, but also the three so-called "plague columns" of Naples). The church is in the design of a Greek cross-that is, a central nave with a transept of equal length as the nave; it has a central dome. A partial inventory of the art works contained in the church includes: -three paintings by Gaspare Traversi dated 1749: The Nativity, The Annunciation, and the Ascension of the Virgin; -the monument tomb of Gennaro Acamparo by Francesco Pagano from 1738; -also by Pagano, the angels that support the candelabra of the main altar; -the painting of The Virgin of Succour by Giuseppe Farina; -The Flight of Joseph by Nicola Malincolico; -the side ovals of The Archangel Michael by Giacinto Diano. The restoration of Santa Maria dell'Aiuto has been spectacularly successful. . I harbor no illusion that I will ever discover- much less write about-all of the little churches in Naples that are abandoned and falling apart. But sometimes I see one set incongruously in the middle of the modern city, and it stirs my urge to know more. Via Depretis is the avenue between Piazza Municipio (the site of the city hall) and Piazza della Borsa (the stock exchange). Like all such straight, broad thoroughfares in that section of Naples, it is the product of the massive reconstruction called the risanamento, a 30-year project of the late 19th and early 20th century. A smaller, yet important, wave of construction took place in Naples during the 1920s and 30s and produced those mastodons of Fascist Art Deco such as the main post office, the passenger terminal at the port of Naples, and all of the municipal and provincial government buildings on or near Piazza Matteotti. Another neighborhood; indeed, it and the large risanamento building a few yards away could do an excellent car-crusher number on the tiny edifice caught in the middle, the church of San Giacomo degli Italiani. The small church is closed, dilapidated and non-descript'yet, for what it's worth-it managed to survive two great waves of purposeful demolition and construction in the last century and even various random waves of destruction in the form of the aerial bombardments of WW II. The church was a remake in the 1570s of a nearby church of the same name that disappeared as part of Spanish construction in the 16th century. The original church was from 1328 and was the seat of the Order of the Knights of St. James. The appellation "degli church-more familiar to Neapolitans and, indeed, still a functioning church-San Giacomo degli Spagnoli. Or, says another theory, it was to honor sailors from Pisa ("Italians" as opposed to "Neapolitans") whose fleet rested in the port of Naples for a while on the way home from a victory over the Saracens further south in 1327. The facade of the present church incorporates the portal from the 1500s as well as a crest comprised of a shell, sword, and cross, the symbol of the Order of St. James. The church was left standing intentionally during the risanamento and was reconsecrated in 1901. I have been unable to find out if it served as a church after the giant building was put up next door. I suspect that it was closed during that period and simply never reopened. If the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin is as old as legend says it is, no wonder UNESCO is willing to chip in �,000 to restore it as a museum. That is, if it was really founded by Constantin the Great-around the year 300-that would put the church in the first ranks of paleo-Christian houses of worship in Naples. At the very least, the church is at least as old as one of the same name in Rome from the 500s, and, in any event, has been documented to be one of the first four parishes in Naples. The unusual name comes from the Greek adjective cosmedin (from meaning ornate. The church in Naples held both Greek and Latin rites until around the year 1200. S.M. Cosemedin is also called S.M. di Portanova (New Gate) from its location near a medieval city gate of that name. The small square in front of the church is still called Portanova and is about one block in (i.e., to the north) from the modern straight boulevard named Corso Umberto, not far from the main building of the Federico II University. The structure has been closed since the 1980 earthquake and is in impossibly bad and unsafe condition. Virtually nothing of the artistic interior remains, all having been either stolen/vandalized or removed for safekeeping. The configuration that one sees today is from the late 1600s and early 1700s, concealing the grounds beneath the main body of the church, site of a burial ground and presumably whatever remains of the original paleo-Christian premises. There are upper stories, as well. Through the centuries, various monastic orders found a home in an adjacent monastery, removed during the Risanamento, the urban renewal of the late 1800s. That construction/demolition also removed an ornate Baroque double stair-case at the entrance. I have heard nothing of current plans to start restoration or of the disposition of the monies supposedly allocated by UNESCO. The Church of S. provincial vicar of the Carmelite order. The church was built about a third of the way up the steep slope leading to the San Martino monastery and the Sant' Elmo fortress. The church was, thus, well above the new main street, via Toledo, and was at the high southwest section of the area still called the "Spanish quarters", built in the mid-1500s to garrison Spanish vice-royal troops. In those days, the slopes were still bucolic and sprinkled with churches and monasteries at about the level of today's road, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which winds along east to west just above the Concordia and other religious institutions from around the same period. These include the nearby church of Santa Caterina da Siena and the Convent of the Sisters of the Most Holy Trinity (now known as the ex-Military Hospital). The Concordia was restored in 1718 by Giovan Battista Nauclerio, best known in Naples for his work on the church and monastery of San Domenico Maggiore; the church was then completely restored in 1858. During the various closures of religious orders in Naples since Murat, the premises have also served as a boarding school, a music school, and even an infamous Debtors' Prison. The most significant painting on the premises is The Blessed Virgin with St. Michael; it is either by Giuseppe de Ribera or the Sicilian painter, Bernardo Azzolino (1572 - 1645). Confusing historical note! The church contains the tomb of one Gaspare Benemerino. According to one source (de Lellis, below), Gaspare was due to become the "22nd King of Fez" when he converted to Christianity, [thus] "...renouncing his powerful kingdom...in order to gain the eternal kingdom of Heaven." Since that note appeared in 1654, some sources have simply referred to Gaspare as the son of the "King of Fez," and as one who served Phillip III of Spain. This has led other sources to call Gaspare a son of the ruler of "The Kingdom of Fez," but Fez and the Kingdom of Fez are not necessarily the same and, in this case, are probably not. First, the epitaph near Gaspar's tomb in the church simply says that he was an African king. Assuming the date on the epitaph (1641) to be the year of his death and the reference to "Pope Urban VIII" (papal reign 1623-44) to be accurate, there is some confusion. Although De Lellis transcribed the Latin epitaph to read that Gaspare served "Phillip III of Spain," the stone (photo, right) says "Phillip II" and even that is not clear. It might even be a "Phillip I" that someone has altered to "Phillip II" by adding a numeral. (Of course, that wouldn't fix the chronology, either, but it's as close to 'III' as they could squeeze in. "C'mon, who's going to notice. Let's go to lunch." This is likely to have been Guido Vinnie's Epitaph and Pizza Delivery Service. They still exist!) Second, there was, indeed, an historical state called the Kingdom of Fez with a limited existence, from 1472 to 1554, but that may be irrelevant. What De Lellis meant by "the 22nd king of Fez" was probably that Gaspare was from the city of Fez, a major religious center of Islam since the founding of the city in 789 by the Idrisid dynasty. The city has been called the "Mecca of the West." Rulers of Fez (as well as other parts of Morocco) have been various dynasties called by tribal names such as Idrisid, Almoravid, Marinid, Wattasid, and Saadi. (The Kingdom of Fez is also termed the Wattasid Sultanate.) Thus, de Lellis may have meant that Gaspare was the son of a king in a long, long chain of rulers stretching back to the founding of Fez. In any event, Phillip I (or even Phillip II) on the epitaph stone has to be a mistake, which De Lellis corrected to Phillip III (reigned from 1598 to 1621) in his transcription in order to set the chronology straight. So, Gaspare Benemerino died in 1641 in Naples. He was descended from Moroccan royalty, converted to Christianity and served Phillip III of Spain. I think. source: de Lellis, Carlo. Supplement

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