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Published: April 20th 2017
Alexander the Great
Fresco from Pompeii It's very hard to describe Napoli... there seems to be at least two faces of this very historic city.... Etruscans, Greeks, Romans ... Renaissance Dukedoms,Spanish and French Bourbon kings and the Catholic Church have all had a hand in its development. With Mount Vesuvius towering over the Bay of Naples we all know about the earthquakes in the region and the most famous eruption of 79 AD which destroyed Pompei and Ercolano (Herculaneum) and to some extent it feels like the city is living dangerously on the edge.
But first of all our journey from Rome to Naples was by train. Tip No 1 ..it's very easy to book a ticket online with Trenitalia ..seats were reserved and we download our e ticket. We weren't sure if it had to be printed but no we were told at the station just show it on your smart phone or iPad -Easy! Best thing was my bargain of 3 tickets for the price of 2! If you want to travel,on the fast train you pay a supplement but regional trains are fine and this was a comfortable journey. Ticket inspectors,looking very smart, have a tablet to check your ticket ...a change from
the days when they scribbled a wiggly cross on your ticket with a pen!!! Tip number two ... always have your Swiss Army knife with you - when Colleen tried to explain in her best Italian that she wanted the baguettes cut into 3 I think the guy gave her extra serviettes - then of course I came to the rescue knowing exactly where my knife was packed in my case!
(There is a list of items that some of us ardent travellers share among ourselves as useful bits and pieces e.g. J cloth , pan scrub, kitchen knife , elastic bands or pony tail scunchies, food bag clips, small roll of plastic bags ....well I am sure you can think of other things, but sometimes these things come in very handy and of course the Swiss Army knife is top of the list for me. )
We had a wonderful Air BnB apartment on the edge of the old town and the host Antonio was very helpful in giving us information about what to see and do. We looked out over the rooftops of Santa Maria Novena and within minutes of home we were walking in the
Our apartment
Third floor with a lift ! narrow cobbled streets shaded with tall buildings their balconies with washing hanging out, almost touching from each side. To say it is bustling and lively and crowded and noisy is an understatement and especially as it was Easter there were so many people out jostling each other in the streets with motos and sometimes cars in amongst the pedestrians. Several times we heard a band and loud drumming and along would come a group of children and adults mostly dressed in white and carrying banners and large figures of Christ or Virgin Mary on their shoulders . because the building are so tall and crowded in on one another it's difficult to see how magnificent some of them are but also because they are covered in graffiti. Well I suppose I must say some of it is street art but so much is not .. and it's everywhere you look, so for me that is a downside of Naples along with how dirty and run down some of the areas are. But we never felt unsafe and everyone was in good humour in the streets , and you were not hassled. It is the experience of the Old Town of
The tiny front door of the building
About 12 inches thick !!! Set within a door big enough for a horse and carriage . Naples ... that what it is. However you can walk and turn a corner and you are in wide shopping streets with all the latest fashion and brand stores , and some great architecture and piazzas. Such a surprise was a magnificent glass covered shopping arcade ,Galleria Umberto, ,looking very much like the one in Milan. A trip worth doing is taking the funicular up to the top of the hill to the Castel Elmo where you have a wonderful 360 deg view of the city and bay as well as Vesuvius. Gathering storm clouds and lightning as we were there added to the atmosphere!
On our last day we found the Cloisters of the church Santa Chiara were open so ventured in there and what a surprise again!!! RIght in the middle of the graffitied streets the church doesn't look like much but inside what was the convent was a garden of orange trees and cloisters with beautiful frescoes and benches and pillars covered in Majolica tiles. King Robert had married Queen Sancha of Mallorca so it was her influence to get the nuns to change the cloisters from a veggie garden to the beautiful tiled place it
is today. I wonder what the nuns had to say about that !!
I had a visit also to Naples great archeological museum with the most amazing collection of Greek and Roman sculptures, frescoes and mosaics from Pompeii and Herculaneum and an interesting collection of ancient erotica In a section called the Secret Cabinet!!
On Easter Monday there is a tradition,we were told, of most of the population going out for the day to have a picnic and most of them go to Sorrento ... so that's why when we went to get the train on the Circumvesuviana Line there were monumental queues for tickets and have never seen so many people packed onto a train. I suspect this line has definitely not had much money spent on its infrastructure. And don't expect too many signs to tell you where you are going on these trains ... you have to keep your wits about you! But it was cheap 2€ and that got us to Ercolano to see the ruins of Herculaneum.
Herculaneum is much smaller than Pompeii so it's more manageable to get around. Most of the citizens there died when the gases and heat from
the eruption of the volcano enveloped them and then the city was buried under meters of mud so it was well preserved and now the excavations have revealed whole streets and houses, villas temples and shops. It's a wonderful atmosphere to walk those streets and be able to go into the villas and see the frescoes and writing on the walls. Excavations began in 1700s when tunnels were dug to expose some of the site and it still continues today as there is still much of the ancient town buried beneath the present day town of Ercolano. Only a few decades ago 300 bodies were discovered by what would have been the shoreline , people who had fled the city but then were poisoned by the gases from Vesuvius.
And so then to leave the mainland and take the overnight ferry to Catania in Sicily and I will leave that to next blog.
Well I had to put in the photos of our massively thick front door, and all the locks , the building was 16 C ... they must have wanted to keep out the baddies!! They opened the big door for us when we had the
luggage !
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Jenny
non-member comment
Napoli
I think that you ought to come and all to my Art History class about all the art and architecture that you are seeing. Am I'm jealous - you bet!