Roman Finale - For Real This Time

Departing the Roman Forum on aching feet, we walked out the back exit and up a long flight of stairs. Behind the Roman Forum is a museum and large piazza. One of the interesting things about the Coliseum and Roman Forum is that they sit smack in the middle of a living city, busy streets filled with cars and all. Rounding a corner a few blocks away, we could see a church with it's side cut away to reveal the ancient columns beneath the modern plaster. A city built atop a city, and on and on it goes. We'd decided to walk across the Tiber River to the area of Trastevere. I'd heard that this was the place to feel a little more of a local scene, and it's a bit quieter and out of the traffic congestion than much of Rome. On our route there, we happened upon what looked like a miniature version of the Coliseum. Turns out, it's the Teatro di Marcello, once an open air theatre and now, apartments.  Fancy living in one of those! We took a path that circled the base of the theater, and came upon a crush of tumbled down ruins with this fun little column base among them:

How cute is this little guy!

The theater and ruins are explained in this very helpful sign: "Antique Monument and Archaeological Ruins"

Trastevere was indeed a peaceful area. Unfortunately, by the time we made it there, we all had aching feet. While we tried to enjoy the area, we really just wanted to head to dinner and get off our soles. We'd picked Dar Poeta Pizzeria since Nathan had eaten there and loved it, two guidebooks recommended it, and one podcast I listened to a few weeks ago listed it as the host's favorite pizzeria in Italy. We were lucky to get a table - actually, not lucky, just American. Sure enough, our 6pm arrival netted us a prime table, and when we left around 8pm, about 20 people milled around outside waiting. The pizza was good, I admit, BUT...we live in Naples. I'm currently holding fast to our hometown La Sorbilla as the best pizza in Italy...clearly, this cannot go unchallenged, so we'll be sure to test plenty of pizza in our time here.

Our walk home included a swing by the Pantheon, beautiful at night, and the Trevi Fountain, so we could all throw our coins in again - absolutely necessary to ensure my aunt and uncle's return to Italy.

Buon viaggio e speriamo che tornate!

Showing Them Centro

Hand of Herculus, National Archaeological Museum

The day to show my aunt and uncle Centro Napoli had arrived. As I previously wrote about  with Paige and Julia's Centro visit, this can go either way. Paige and Julia happened to love it. Regardless of what you think you'll feel about Centro, you cannot visit Naples and not go into Centro. It is Naples - it's the vibrancy, the noise, the chaos, and yes, the trash. It is exactly what guidebooks and podcasts talk about. I've recently been listening to some different podcasts about Naples, some of which include call-ins. Without fail, the callers say something along the lines of, "I went to southern Italy a few years ago, and we skipped Naples because we'd heard about the crime." Naples has this reputation of being such a hotbed of crime that even seasoned travelers and well-known tour guides either skip it or have a "get-in, get-out" strategy. And so, a beautiful city with treasures beyond compare goes unrecognized and without those valuable tourist dollars that are probably the only thing to begin moving this city out of the feudal, dark ages to which it seems to have returned.

Here's how the folks propped up family photos 2000 years ago.

With purses firmly across our bodies (and we never felt unsafe), we set off on the metro line nearby for downtown. We followed roughly the same route as I did with Julia and Paige by first heading to the National Archaeological Museum. I have no idea where I read it, but some guidebook described this museum as "dusty" and "tired." That description couldn't be further from the truth. With light and soaring expanses of white marble, I enjoy just walking into the museum. I have yet to get the audioguide to the museum, but it really would be very helpful. While most rooms have a large, English translation on the wall describing the collection and pointing out particularly remarkable items, I think an audioguide is necessary to get the full value.

When visiting with Paige and Julia, we'd gone up to the third floor, where the frescoes from Pompeii were supposed to be. We wandered through rooms of amazing bronze statues, collections of ivory, glass, and silver from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and even an old papyrus (from the Villa of Papyri in Herculaneum - over 1700 scrolls were found in excavations!) - but no frescoes. With Mike and Katrina, while in this large, former library turned painting gallery,  we walked to the other end of the room in order to see an old sundial...and there found the doorway to the frescoes. And what frescoes there were! Rooms and rooms, little ones and big ones, all kinds of subjects, all kinds of techniques - some were paintings, some were faux doorways/windows to the outside world, some were just wallpaper type. How amazing to live in a home with such beauty covering the walls. 

We also found a model of Pompeii, complete with the frescoes (that are now in the museum) painted in miniature on the walls in the locations where they were found. Just amazing.

After lunch at Sorbillo, my favorite pizzeria downtown, we went to see the Veiled Christ statue at Capella Sansevero (written about in the post Centro Napoli) and then took a walk down Spaccanapoli, the ancient road of Naples, built about 2500 years ago to connect Naples with the world beyond. While walking Spaccanapoli, we ducked into Chiesa del Gesu Nuovo. I'm never failed to be astonished when wandering into a church. Even the most unassuming, little church on the corner will generally have at least one piece of breathtaking art, wood carved railing in front of the altar, or inlaid marble floor. Gesu Nuovo didn't fail us and presented an elaborate organ facade, inlaid marble walls and columns, large art in the side chapels, and a few sculptures to finish things off.

In need of a break for our feet, we headed to Cafe Gambrinus, sitting on the edge of Piazza Plebiscito. Cafe Gambrinus has a bad rap among locals and guidebooks alike, as all anyone ever mentions is that it's overpriced. But Cafe Gambrinus is one of Naples' oldest coffee bars and was a haven for the literary intellectuals back in the day - Oscar Wilde is said to have spent time hanging about here. The previous week, Paige, Julia and I had stopped in for a coffee while standing at the bar. For three coffees, we paid the princely sum of 3.40euros, about .40 more than we would have paid elsewhere. We'd taken at peak at the two, richly decorated rooms for sit down patrons, and I decided to return soon and take a table. With heavy, velvet drapes swagged back, frescoes on the walls and ceilings, and tuxedoed waiters, what better place for my aunt, uncle and me to rest our feet this day. We could even get gelato while we were at it. The cafe was a quiet, beautiful, and relaxing spot to gather our energies for our next assault on seeing and doing it all. And it was only about 3euros more per person to enjoy the beauty and history while we relaxed in comfort, not crowded into a small table shoved in the corner with masses of people bumping us on their way to and from the stand-up bar.

From Cafe Gambrinus, we enjoyed the pedestrian area of Chiaia for an hour or so before heading home to rest our over-stimulated brains. Another successful day. My aunt and uncle were loving their trip, and I loved the opportunity to share our new life with them.

Centro Napoli

For Paige and Julia's first day in Naples, we headed off on the Metro to tour Centro (Naples downtown area). Centro can go either way for visitors. It is chaotic, urban, loud, and crowded. You have to constantly watch for speeding motorscooters, cars driving down the small alley where you're walking, and keep one hand on your purse, which must be looped across your body rather than just hanging from one shoulder. And no nice or flashy jewelry visible. Centro is filled with gorgeous architecture that is difficult to see because you are (a) watching the ground to avoid those pesky, uneven cobblestones that are so very charming, (b) looking over your shoulder for the car or scooter that's about to run you down, or (c) trying to avoid the sheer mass of people bouncing off one another like ping-pong balls. For those who can handle the urban jungle, centro is fantastic - filled with the gorgeous architecture I already mentioned, hundreds of lovingly cared for shrines tucked away on the exterior walls, Italians living their lives rather than catering to tourists, housewives on their balconies hanging laundry on the line strung across the alley or lowering the bucket with her money to pay the vegetable man as he sends up her order, and churches filled with beautiful floors, walls, and artwork are quite literally on every corner.

Our first stop was the Naples Archaeological Museum, considered one of the foremost archeological museums in Europe. Beyond a first floor so filled with beautiful, marble statues that I eventually couldn't focus on the individual works, the upper floors contain the treasures excavated from Pompeii and Herculaneum - the two main cities buried under the ash of Mount Vesuvius's 79AD eruption. I love the frescoes - frescoes are everywhere in this country, on the ceilings, the walls, and even among quiet, barely known and visited ruins. The ancients, and then 1500 years later, the renaissance folks, loved their frescoes (although the renaissance time period frescoes were the economical answer to the very expensive, labor-intensive, tapestries previously favored among the upper classes). And a week later, when I took my aunt and uncle to the same museum, I found that Paige, Julia and I had missed an entire wing of the museum with astonishingly intact frescoes. So the frescoes are great, but where I really drop my jaw is with the mosaics. I have zero skill in drawing and painting, so when I look at the mosaics, I just can't believe that the artists took tiny, chips of stone and then arranged them into scenes that show life, movement, shading, and emotion. Even the smallest of the mosaics captures my amazement, so the wall sized ones are nothing short of a miracle.

Centro is also home to the very best pizza in the entire world (confirmed by numerous critics and travel writers, so not just my very biased opinion). My absolute favorite is Sorbillo, which a friend and I found one day by accident as we wandered around downtown after our language class. The wait wasn't too bad, we enjoyed the pizza, and I later found out that we'd just happened upon a local favorite. It's the only place I ever return to over and over in spite of the rude service (atypical in Italy). Paige and Julia had their first taste of pizza in Naples, and it was good!

Christmas Alley is nearby, an area where artisans make the presepes (nativities) and presepe figures by hand and one of the things Naples is most known for. And Cappella Sansevero is only a few, short blocks away. Cappella Sansevero, I've written before, is home to the Veiled Christ sculpture. No photos are allowed, but following the link will show you exactly why this small chapel is, to me, the single most important site in Naples - an absolute "don't miss." I've been blessed with the opportunity to travel throughout Europe in the past, and we've lived all over the U.S., including near the Smithsonian in D.C. I enjoy museums and will usually visit what's nearby. Of the thousands of sculptures and statues I've seen, this one is "The One," more beautiful than David, in Florence's Accademia Museum, more emotional than Michelangelo's Pieta, in Rome's St. Peter's Basilica. In person and up close, the Veiled Christ brings tears to your eyes, either due to the subject matter or awe of the sheer skill by sculptor Giuseppe Sanmartino or both. I wrote of my amazement in taking little pieces of stone and creating a mosaic, but even more confounding is taking a block of hard marble and chipping out a discernible body with muscles and veins defined, yet the whole thing covered with a skin clinging veil. How? As if the Veiled Christ weren't enough, Cappella Sansevero is home to yet another amazing sculpture, Disinganno, of a fisherman surrounded by a fishing net that is folded in on itself in places - all out of marble, and yet one can so clearly see the the holes in the net, the places where the net lies on top of itself, and underneath, the man. I did a quick check, and Veiled Christ doesn't even make the top 100 in lists of greatest sculptures. To visit it, you walk down an alley most likely filled with garbage, make a turn, buy a ticket from the office that may or may not close for the afternoon, then walk down the block and enter an unassuming door...and into a place that will prove itself far worthier than those ever more popular museums so crowded you must make a reservation, wait in line for hours, spend more hours walking through miles of corridors filled with jostling tourists, all just as tired, hot, and hungry as you are, before being spit out into the street, unable to remember what you've just seen.

As if all this we'd seen in the past few hours wasn't enough to actually fill several days, we also did an underground tour of Naples through Napoli Sotterana. I'd heard how interesting it was and had yet to take the tour. We dutifully joined in with the English speaking group, followed our adorable guide down the street and around a few turns to an unmarked door with apartments above it, into a lobby with some nice, presepe examples, and down the stairs to the ancient, Greek theater. Before the Romans were here, this place was part of Magna-Grecia. Beneath modern Naples lie Greek and Roman ruins, complete with forums, temples, theaters, and a huge network of tunnels and cisterns. Many of these places became the landfills for the homes built above them - what's easier than opening your window or the little hole in your floor to get rid of the garbage. In fact, in one place we walked, our guide explained that the trash was too difficult to remove, so rather than digging beneath it to the original floor, a new floor was just paved on top of all the trash. "What lies beneath" is a near constant refrain as I wander around ruins, both those of the urban chaos and when I'm out in the suburbs watching a ruin disappear into a shrub covered hillside.

The main part of the tour took us down into the aforementioned network of cisterns and tunnels, once used by the Romans. We could see the foot and handholds used by the man in charge of skimming the water with a net - he'd climb down into the cistern using small square indentations cut into the rock, then walk above the water with the net to clean it. In some areas, there is still a bit of water that flows through. During WWII, these areas were used as bunkers, and hundreds of people spent much of their lives down here to escape the bombing. During WWII, Naples was the most bombed city in Italy. While Neapolitans lived under fascism for more than 20 years, German occupation was just taking things too far. The people of the city rebelled and freed Naples in 1943.

Following our Sotterana tour, we found that we'd been a little too interested in all that Centro has to offer and had seen only about half the sites on our  list. Aching and blistered feet dictated a return to the metro and home. We would just have to return.

Yumm, Sorbillo!

My aunt and uncle eating their first Neapolitan pizza...at Sorbillo's in Centro (downtown), my favorite pizzeria!

Shopping Chiaia

Today my friend, K., took me to the Chiaia district of Napoli, a ritzy, beautiful, clean area with that Old World charm one expects to find in Italy. She and her husband love walking around Chiaia, and having seen it at last, I can see why. It is charming, with beautiful buildings, quiet streets, tree filled alleys leading down to the sea or up the hill to grand villas, and the best of the best for shopping. We're talking Bulgari, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Ferragamo. We met in Piazza Amadeo, where the Metro drops off, and as I emerged from the empty Metro and entered an empty piazza, confusion reigned. This is not the Napoli I know. My friend was already there waiting and had realized today was Epiphany, a national holiday here in Italy. We later found the crowds in our walk around the district, but for the morning, we had blessed quiet. I said it was clean, however, Chiaians love to walk their dogs around - this, apparently, is where the fancy dog owners live, and it must just be too much to actually pick up Fifi's poop. One of us stepped in it right away. Our Italian language instructor had informed us that this is considered good luck. I think she made that up.

After a stop off for caffe, we headed down the street, right away passing the gorgeous, baroque, Chiesa Santa Teresa. Mass was just ending, so we popped inside and found two inspiring paintings, a worn and beautiful, tile floor, Christmas presepe, crystal chandeliers forming an arch over the altar, inlaid marble half walls, and a frescoed ceiling. That little church packs a punch. The coral colored facade is covered with statues and cherubs to delight the eye.

One of Chiaia's storefronts

Most of the shops were closed, but we lucked into one filled with clothes on saldi (sale!). Sadly, most did not fit, but we gazed longingly into windows of all the other shops with their large SALDI signs and made plans to return soon. Walking along the waterfront, we took the longer, scenic route to our real destination: Brandi Pizzeria, a pizzeria in business since 1780 and the inventor of the Pizza Margherita...or at least the pizzeria who named it. The original name of the pizzeria was Pietro...a basta cosi (Peter...and that's enough). The owner, Peter, did not have sons and gave over his pizzeria to Enrico Brandi. Brandi later left the pizzeria to his daughter. In 1889, the daughter and her husband were invited to the Royal Palace during a visit by King Umberto I and Queen Margherita di Savoia. The husband prepared three pizzas to present to the Royals, including a white pizza, a pizza with sardines, and a tomato and mozzarella pizza. Queen Margherita particularly liked the tomato and mozzarella pizza, and so the name Pizza Margherita was born. The pizza was delicious, and the atmosphere even better. The host (owner? manager? head waiter?) wore a full suit and wandered about refilling glasses while a talented guitarist showed up with quite a repertoire and got the whole restaurant clapping along.

Every pizzeria I've visited is different. Some quiet and unassuming, some bustling and packing the patrons in, some as family run establishments, and yet others as elegant restaurants that happen to serve only pizza. It's a fascinating range of experiences with only one constant...there's not a bad pizza to be found.

I can't wait to return to Chiaia and see it when the shops, bars, and trattorias have their shutters flung open...maybe even tomorrow.

La Fontana Immacolatella, located along Napoli's waterfront

Just an update

I now believe that it is never going to stop raining – never, never. It has rained all day, every day for weeks on end now. I think we might have had a nice day two weeks ago. One nice day. Even a friend from the Northwest recently commented that this is worse than Seattle, just to give you an idea of how much rain we’re getting. Crazy Dog is stir crazy in the house, but doesn't want to be in the rain. He has developed little monkey paws, and when I leave for language class in the mornings, as I'm trying to close the front door, he hooks a paw around the door like a cat and has apparently been lifting weights as he has developed enough strength to actually stop me from closing the door. So every time I leave the house this happens, I have to open the door back up, whereupon we have yet another discussion on how scared he is of thunder and lightning, so he may not stay outside while I'm gone. During one of our recent storms, Scully jumped full into my lap and commenced shaking. That was fine with me as the lightning was hitting really closely (and we've already had one strike that knocked out a light fixture), so we cuddled together until the storm was passed. I hope by my return to Italy we will at least begin having some sun every now and then!

In other news, I have finally ventured into our local Supermercato. Supermarket is a bit of a misnomer as it is more of a neighborhood grocery, but it has all the basics, with an added bonus of the most interesting freezer section I've ever come across. Sadly I didn't have my camera with me, so photos will have to come later. The freezers are the ones that are open on the top, like where all the frozen turkeys and chickens are put in American stores. Except here, there is frozen seafood...not in a package. One section has a bunch of frozen octopus(es? - what exactly is the plural?), another has some pre-fried seafood, just ready to go back into your own pot, and yet another has a bunch of beady-eyed fish staring up at the shoppers. It's fascinating.

We also finally tried out our local pizzeria. It's yummy, and about a 3 minute walk away, so "perfetto" (perfect). I was scolded by the owner because I only ate half my pizza and Nathan ate the rest. I think he didn't believe me when I said how good it was. But the pizzas are the size of two dinner plates, and one person is supposed to eat a whole one! They are significantly lighter than U.S. pizzas, but still!

Alleyways and Neon Jesus

Here are a few photos of our first day of touring around Naples. We first started by following a little walking tour out of our Lonely Planet Naples guidebook. That took us to Santissima Annunziata, a church which was closed. But attached to it was the better site anyway - an old orphanage with a baby drop-off wheel:

Drop off your baby!

That window overlooks an alley. A nun sat on this side waiting for the wheel to spin, where she would then bathe the child in this little basin before registering it into the orphanage.

 Shortly hereafter, we just started off wandering, and headed to a pizzeria. We have no idea where we were, but found a little pizzeria on a side street. We figured that in Naples, it would be impossible to get a bad pizza. While the pizza was delicious...

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Our first pizza in Naples - yummmmm!

 the best was the picture of Jesus framed in neon on the wall behind the brick ovens.

Brick Ovens, Pizza Artist, and Neon Jesus

We're all for Jesus, and if having Him framed in neon helped make our pizza taste as good as it did, then bring on the neon.

More wandering led us past fantastic alleys...

Laundry, Laundry everywhere...electricity is too expensive to use dryers; also notice the blue bucket about 2/3 down in the pic - this is apartment "shopping." The lady holding the bucket on a rope lowers it for her items, pulls them up, then lowers money.

By complete accident, we found one of the most famous streets in Naples:

Via San Greggorio Armeno, home to presepi (nativity) artisans. Sadly, the presepi are made out of bark & moss, which the USDA bans from importation. These are one of the top "souvenirs" of Naples.

Here it is...my first Neapolitan gelato. Pistachio. Yum, Yum, Yum.

The mall; yep, that's our shopping mall.

And finally, this is some castle. I'm sure I've seen it listed in guidebooks. We were just headed to our bus and came upon it, so I have no additional info at this time.

We had a great first day walking around. It was definitely key to just get lost as we got off the main, really congested streets and got a feel for the Neapolitan life. We even got to witness some sort of intense, Jerry Springerish, lady fight which had all the locals coming out of their houses, staring and shaking their heads. Sadly, no pics of that.
I've seen other blogs with photo albums attached, so eventually, we'll include some album links. Ciao for now.