Naples Italy Quotes

Leave, instead. Get away for good, far from the life we’ve lived since birth. Settle in well-organized lands where everything really is possible. I had fled, in fact. Only to discover, in the decades to come, that I had been wrong, that it was a chain with larger and larger links: the neighborhood was connected to the city, the city to Italy, Italy to Europe, Europe to the whole planet. And this is how I see it today: it’s not the neighborhood that’s sick, it’s not Naples, it’s the entire earth, it’s the universe, or universes. And shrewdness means hiding and hiding from oneself the true state of things.

Here we are at last. The Italian proverb says “See Naples and die” but I say, see Naples and live; for there seems a great deal worth living for.

I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t. . . . I very much love those mysterious volumes, both ancient and modern, that have no definite author but have had and continue to have an intense life of their own. They seem to me a sort of nighttime miracle, like the gifts of the Befana, which I waited for as a child. . . . True miracles are the ones whose makers will never be known. . . . Besides, isn’t it true that promotion is expensive? I will be the least expensive author of the publishing house. I’ll spare you even my presence.

Nous restions tous des heures sur nos bouts d’appartements décapotables pour nous observer, nous alpaguer, chacun avait son petit théâtre.

...she felt safe with Nicolo, and feared nothing.

...the city of Naples was like this: wonderful from a distance, but when seen close up, it was fragmentary, indefinable, and coarse...

People who go to Italy to look at ruins won’t have to go as far as Naples and Pompeii in the future.

People who go to Italy to look at ruins won’t have to go as far as Naples and Pompeii in the future.

And across the water, you would swear you could sniff it all; the cinnamon and the cloves, the frankincense and the honey and the licorice, the nutmeg and citrons, the myrrh and the rosewater from Persia in keg upon keg. You would think you could glimpse, heaped and glimmering, the sapphires and the emeralds and the gauzes woven with gold, the ostrich feathers and the elephant tusks, the gums and the ginger and the coral buttons mynheer Goswin the clerk of the Hanse might be wearing on his jacket next week. . . . The Flanders galleys put into harbor every night in their highly paid voyage from Venice, fanned down the Adriatic by the thick summer airs, drifting into Corfu and Otranto, nosing into and out of Sicily and round the heel of Italy as far as Naples; blowing handsomely across the western gulf to Majorca, and then to the north African coast, and up and round Spain and Portugal, dropping off the small, lucrative loads which were not needed for Bruges; taking on board a little olive oil, some candied orange peel, some scented leather, a trifle of plate and a parrot, some sugar loaves.

A German poet once said, "A Neapolitan (people who come from the area around Naples, Italy) would certainly be a different creature if he didn't feel himself wedged between God and the Devil.

The irony behind the Church's disdain for the practice is that European Catholics have used saintly relics and bones as intermediaries for more than a thousand years. The ñatitas were similar in purpose to other skulls I had met several years earlier, on a trip to Naples, Italy.

The pilgrimage of Italy, which I now accomplished, had long been the object of my curious devotion. The passage of Mount Cenis, the regular streets of Turin, the Gothic cathedral of Milan, the scenery of the Boromean Islands, the marble palaces of Genoa, the beauties of Florence, the wonders of Rome, the curiosities of Naples, the galleries of Bologna, the singular aspect of Venice, the amphitheatre of Verona, and the Palladian architecture of Vicenza, are still present to my imagination. I read the Tuscan writers on the banks of the Arno; but my conversation was with the dead rather than the living, and the whole college of Cardinals was of less value in my eyes than the transfiguration of Raphael, the Apollo of the Vatican, or the massy greatness of the Coliseum. It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind. After Rome has kindled and satisfied the enthusiasm of the Classic pilgrim, his curiosity for all meaner objects insensibly subsides.

As time passed there was no more buying food, no money, no supplies. On some days, we wouldn’t even have a crumb to eat. There’s a vivid scene in Nanni Loy’s The Four Days of Naples, a movie made after the war about the uprising of the Neapolitans against the occupying Germans, in which one of the young characters sinks his teeth into a loaf of bread so voraciously, so desperately, I can still identify with him. In those four famous days in late September, when Naples rose up against the Germans—even before the Allies arrived, it was the climax of a terrible period of deprivation and marked the beginning of the end of the war in Italy.

The mainstay of Italian coffee lore, la tazzina del caffe, or an espresso, as served by one’s local bar and during the day consumed - generally - standing up, is another one of those things about which Italians have very strong feelings. The purists want is very dense, ristrettissimo, which is the way they serve it in Naples...

Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences, show me the woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris? What is the amount of justice springs from your tribunals? Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute in his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you are, like ourselves, Misérables.

But beyond the extravagance of Rome's wealthiest citizens and flamboyant gourmands, a more restrained cuisine emerged for the masses: breads baked with emmer wheat; polenta made from ground barley; cheese, fresh and aged, made from the milk of cows and sheep; pork sausages and cured meats; vegetables grown in the fertile soil along the Tiber. In these staples, more than the spice-rubbed game and wine-soaked feasts of Apicius and his ilk, we see the earliest signs of Italian cuisine taking shape. The pillars of Italian cuisine, like the pillars of the Pantheon, are indeed old and sturdy. The arrival of pasta to Italy is a subject of deep, rancorous debate, but despite the legend that Marco Polo returned from his trip to Asia with ramen noodles in his satchel, historians believe that pasta has been eaten on the Italian peninsula since at least the Etruscan time. Pizza as we know it didn't hit the streets of Naples until the seventeenth century, when Old World tomato and, eventually, cheese, but the foundations were forged in the fires of Pompeii, where archaeologists have discovered 2,000-year-old ovens of the same size and shape as the modern wood-burning oven. Sheep's- and cow's-milk cheeses sold in the daily markets of ancient Rome were crude precursors of pecorino and Parmesan, cheeses that literally and figuratively hold vast swaths of Italian cuisine together. Olives and wine were fundamental for rich and poor alike.

he refused absolutely to lead a caffè-haunting existence in one of the big towns of Italy.   “Can’t you see yourself on the Corso of Florence or Naples,” said the Duchessa, “with thoroughbred English horses? For the evenings a carriage, a charming apartment,” and so forth. She dwelt with exquisite relish on the details of this vulgar happiness, which she saw Fabrizio thrust from him with disdain. “He is a hero,” she thought.

We start our meal in the kitchen, right beside the blazing oven, where one of Franco's cooks chops a filet of local grass-fed beef into rough cubes and dresses it with olive oil and wisps of lemon rind. A puffy disc of dough emerges from the oven, which Franco cuts into wedges before heaping it with mounds of this restrained tartare. The union of warm, smoky bread and cool, grassy beef is enough to make me want to camp out in the kitchen for the rest of the night.

Fu un momento indimenticabile. Andammo verso via Caracciolo, sempre più vento, sempre più sole. Il Vesuvio era una forma delicata color pastello ai piedi della quale si ammucchiavano i ciottoli biancastri della città, il taglio color terra di Castel dell'Ovo, il mare. Ma che mare. Era agitatissimo, fragoroso, il vento toglieva il fiato, incollava i vestiti addosso e levava i capelli dalla fronte. Ci tenemmo dall'altro lato della strada insieme a una piccola folla che guardava lo spettacolo. Le onde ruzzolavano come tubi di metallo blu portando in cima la chiara d'uovo della spuma, poi si frangevano in mille schegge scintillanti e arrivavano fin sulla strada con un oh di meraviglia e timore da parte di tutti noi che guardavamo. Che peccato che non c'era Lila. Mi stenti stordita dalle raffiche potenti, dal rumore. Avevo l'impressione che, pur assorbendo molto di quello spettacolo, moltissime cose, troppe si spampanassero intorno senza lasciarsi afferrare. Mio padre mi strinse la mano come se temesse che sgusciassi via. Infatti avevo voglia di lasciarlo, correre, spostarmi, attraversare la strada, farmi investire dalle scaglie brillanti del mare. In quel momento così tremendo, pieno di luce e di clamore, mi finsi sola nel nuovo della città, nuova io stessa con tutta la vita davanti, esposta alla furia mobile delle cose ma sicuramente vincitrice: io, io e Lila, noi due con quella capacità che insieme - solo insieme - avevamo di prendere la massa di colori, di rumori, di cose e persone, e raccontarcela e darle forza".

In awe at the sheer beauty of the setting, Celina stepped onto the balcony, which overlooked a terrace garden of fruit trees. "It's so beautiful here." She breathed in, catching the scent of fruit trees below. "What type of fruit are you growing?" "Mostly lemon," Sara said. "But also olive, grapefruit, orange, fig, and pomegranate. With our temperate climate, most everything thrives." Celina peered over the balcony's edge. To one side, a cliff dropped to the sea, while on the other, a terrace sprawled along the hilltop perch. Flaming pink bougainvillea and snowy white jasmine curled around the corners of grapevine-covered archways that framed the shimmering ocean view.

A fair questioin. You've been to Naples. Imagine it five hundred years ago. Would it have made a difference?" "I've never been to Naples, Mr. Stone. But yeah, anywhere would have been totally different. It's not about Italy. It's about isolation and freedom and wanting more than you have." "True.True. But...I was so sure.Didn't you talk about Vesuvius when we read The Last Days of Pompeii?" "I think you might be confusing me with someone else." "No,no.I'm quite sure it was you. Wasn't it?" "No.It wasn't." "Oh,now,Ella. I distinctly remember something about the cleansing aspects of fire...Oh." "Wrong aspects, Mr. Stone." "Right,right. Of course. My mistake. Okay. No harm done. So,about islands...

... the exotic spices arriving daily from the East Indies and the Americas, the crates of sweet oranges and bitter lemons from Sicily, the apricots from Mesopotamia, the olive oil from Naples, the almonds from the Jordan valley... I have seen and smelled these delicacies at market. But does any English person know how to cook with such foods? I think back to my time in France and Italy, of all the delicacies that passed across my tongue. And then to the gardens I've seen in Tonbridge with their raised beds of sorrel, lettuce, cucumbers, marrows, pumpkins. Already the banks are starred bright with blackberries and rose hips, with damsons and sour sloes, the bloom still upon them. Trees are weighted down with green apples and yellow mottled pears and crab apples flushed pink and gold. Soon there will be fresh cobnuts in their husks, and ripe walnuts, and field mushrooms, and giant puffballs.

In 1934, strongman Fulgencio Batista forced President Grau’s resignation. Then in 1940, Grau lost his bid for the Presidency to his adversary Batista. Four years later in 1944, he did win the election and took office for a four-year term starting on October 10th. After Grau won the election and was the President elect, Batista still in office, blatantly attacked the National Treasury, leaving the cupboards bare by the time Grau was actually sworn in as President. Since Grau and Batista were staunch adversaries, it is highly unlikely that any deal could have been made in 1946 to allow “Lucky” Luciano into Cuba, especially with Luciano having been exiled to Sicily by the United States government that preceding February. Still, Lansky had enough political pull within the Cuban government to prepare for a strong Mafia presence in Havana. In October of 1946, in an attempt to keep his whereabouts a secret, “Lucky” Luciano covertly boarded a freighter taking him from Naples, Italy, to Caracas, Venezuela. Then Luciano flew south to Rio de Janeiro and returned north to Mexico City. On October 29, 1946, he arranged for a private flight from Mexico City to Camagüey, Cuba, where Meyer Lansky met him. Having the right connections, Luciano passed through Cuban customs unimpeded and was whisked by car to the splendid Grand Hotel. Luciano, having just arrived in Cuba, was looking forward to setting up operations. Cuba would actually be a better place than the United States for what he had in mind.

In the 1500s, it was a crime to be caught kissing in Naples, Italy. The punishment? Death!

With its street crime, prostitutes, and drug dealers, Milan was second only to Naples as the seediest city in Italy.

What you hear from other Italians is that Naples isn’t even Italy. “But that’s a very Italian attitude to start with, a not-quite nation of city-states for whom the next village over will always be the worst place on earth.

the sacrifice of the village of Altavilla, shelled out of existence because it might have contained Germans.

Due scugnizzi davano la caccia a un gatto zoppo, la cui morte avrebbe regalato alle loro magre esistenze un breve divertimento (223).

Elle est belle la nuit, notre ville. Elle est pleine de danger, mais aussi de liberté. Les sans-sommeil, les artistes, les assassins, les joueurs y déambulent, les bistrots, les snacks, les cafés sont ouverts. On se salue, on se connaît, entre ceux qui vivent la nuit. Les gens se pardonnent leurs vices. La lumière du jour accuse, l’obscurité de la nuit donne l’absolution. Les transformés sortent, des hommes habillés en femme parce que la nature les y pousse, et personne ne les embête. On ne demande compte de rien, la nuit. Les éclopés, les aveugles, les boiteux sortent, eux qui le jour sont rejetés. La nuit, la ville est une poche retournée. Même les chiens sortent, ceux qui n’ont pas de maison. Ils attendent la nuit pour chercher les restes, tant de chiens survivent sans personne. La nuit, la ville est un pays civilisé.

The invitation came from Studio Morra in Naples: Come and perform whatever you want. It was early 1975. With the scandalized reactions of the Belgrade press fresh in my mind, I planned a piece in which the audience would provide the action. I would merely be the object, the receptacle. My plan was to go to the gallery and just stand there, in black trousers and a black T-shirt, behind a table containing seventy-two objects: A hammer. A saw. A feather. A fork. A bottle of perfume. A bowler hat. An ax. A rose. A bell. Scissors. Needles. A pen. Honey. A lamb bone. A carving knife. A mirror. A newspaper. A shawl. Pins. Lipstick. Sugar. A Polaroid camera. Various other things. And a pistol, and one bullet lying next to it. When a big crowd had gathered at eight P.M., they found these instructions on the table: There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility. Duration: 6 hours (8pm - 2am) Slowly at first and then quickly, things began to happen. It was very interesting: for the most part, the women in the gallery would tell the men what to do to me, rather than do it themselves (although later on, when someone stuck a pin into me, one woman wiped the tears from my eyes). For the most part, these were just normal members of the Italian art establishment and their wives. Ultimately I think the reason I wasn’t raped was that the wives were there. As evening turned into late night, a certain air of sexuality arose in the room. This came not from me but from the audience. We were in southern Italy, where the Catholic Church was so powerful, and there was this strong Madonna/whore dichotomy in attitudes toward women. After three hours, one man cut my shirt apart with the scissors and took it off. People manipulated me into various poses. If they turned my head down, I kept it down; if they turned it up, I kept it that way. I was a puppet—entirely passive. Bare-breasted, I stood there, and someone put the bowler hat on my head. With the lipstick, someone else wrote IO SONO LIBERO—“I am free”—on the mirror and stuck it in my hand. Someone else took the lipstick and wrote END across my forehead. A guy took Polaroids of me and stuck them in my hand, like playing cards. Things got more intense. A couple of people picked me up and carried me around. They put me on the table, spread my legs, stuck the knife in the table close to my crotch. Someone stuck pins into me. Someone else slowly poured a glass of water over my head. Someone cut my neck with the knife and sucked the blood. I still have the scar. There was one man—a very small man—who just stood very close to me, breathing heavily. This man scared me. Nobody else, nothing else, did. But he did. After a while, he put the bullet in the pistol and put the pistol in my right hand. He moved the pistol toward my neck and touched the trigger. There was a murmur in the crowd, and someone grabbed him. A scuffle broke out. Some of the audience obviously wanted to protect me; others wanted the performance to continue. This being southern Italy, voices were raised; tempers flared. The little man was hustled out of the gallery and the piece continued. In fact, the audience became more and more active, as if in a trance. And then, at two A.M., the gallerist came and told me the six hours were up. I stopped staring and looked directly at the audience. “The performance is over,” the gallerist said. “Thank you.” I looked like hell. I was half naked and bleeding; my hair was wet. And a strange thing happened: at this moment, the people who were still there suddenly became afraid of me. As I walked toward them, they ran out of the gallery.

It became increasingly fashionable for wealthy Romans to amass large private libraries in their town houses and country villas. (There were no bookshops in the early years in Rome, but, in addition to the collections seized as booty, books could be purchased from dealers in southern Italy and Sicily where the Greeks had founded such cities as Naples, Tarentum, and Syracuse.)

The results were convincing. During two summer months of 1943 in Sicily, the US Army had 21,482 hospital admissions for malaria compared to 17,375 battle casualties (wounded and dead). A public health poster had it right: “The malaria mosquito knocks out more men than the enemy.” Field testing of DDT began in Italy in August 1943; by 1945 new cases of malaria had declined by more than 80 percent, and DDT was also in use, in an indiscriminate but highly effective fashion, to stop the typhus epidemic in Naples.

Vespasiano was, as Ferrante told Piero de’ Medici, someone on whom the king relied for “information and experience.” Though Ferrante may not have initiated these reports, he certainly welcomed and encouraged them once they started arriving. In November 1467 he wrote Vespasiano to thank him for a letter sent ten days earlier, saying he was gratified to receive his news and urging Vespasiano to be diligent in reporting “the things happening there.”33 In another letter written a few weeks later, Ferrante thanked Vespasiano for supplying “a great deal of diverse news,” then wrote of making a great effort against “those who have disturbed the peace of Italy”—a reference to the Venetians and the ruler of Ferrara, Borso d’Este, who supported the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples, and who was, like so many other involved parties, Ferrante included, one of Vespasiano’s customers.

St. Andrew of the Woods, Rome, Italy (1842) The next apparition took place in 1842 and was directly related to the first. Alphonse Tobie Ratisbonne was a twenty-eight-year-old Jewish man in the prime of his life who had just gotten engaged to marry. He was a lawyer from a wealthy family and was charming, good looking, and good humored. Prior to his wedding, he decided to spend the winter in Malta. At all costs, however, he wanted to avoid Rome because he hated Catholicism; the conversion and ordination of his brother Theodore had only fanned the flames of his already intense hatred of the Faith. But somehow, because of a delay with boats out of Naples and his own restlessness, Ratisbonne found himself in the Eternal City. With a few days to spend before his boat left for Malta, Ratisbonne caught up with some friends, including Baron Theodore de Bussières, who gave Ratisbonne a Miraculous Medal as a challenge to Ratisbonne’s fierce anti-Catholicism. The baron argued, “If it is just superstition, then it won’t harm you in the least to wear this or to read the memorare prayer.” Then on January 20, 1842, while waiting for the baron in the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte (“St. Andrew of the Woods”), Ratisbonne saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin. The brief vision of blinding beauty didn’t include an exchange of words, but by the end of it, Ratisbonne said he knew “all the secrets of divine pity.”3 He immediately converted to Catholicism, joined the priesthood, and moved to Israel with a ministry to convert the Jews. Ratisbonne’s conversion was so significant that even the pope heard of it and wanted to learn more about this “miraculous medal” and the nun who had it cast. The medal’s popularity swelled and Sister Catherine’s waned as she remained just another cloistered nun among many.

Under alle omstendigheter, og da skyver jeg alle spørsmål om mine egne mangler til side, er jeg ankommet på et tidspunkt da disse folkene i sine hjerter må være grundig syke og kvalme av oss. For et år siden frigjorde vi dem fra fascistmonsteret, og de sitter fortsatt der og gjør sitt beste for å smile høflig til oss - like sultne som alltid og mer plaget av sykdommer enn noensinne, i ruinene av sin vakre by der lov og orden har opphørt å gjelde. Og hva er gevinsten de til slutt kan vinne? Demokratiets gjenfødelse. Den vidunderlige utsikten til en vakker dag å bli i stand til å velge sine egne herskere fra en liste over mektige menn, hvorav de flestes korrupthet er alment kjent og akseptert med trett resignasjon. Benito Mussolinis dager må fremstå som et tapt paradis sammenlignet med dette.

In Naples, where pizza was invented, Fairchild tasted his first cheesy flatbread, a punishing food for first-timers, whose mouths could be scorched with hot, lavalike cheese. He was enchanted by the various shapes of macaroni. And pastries were works of history. Naples' mixed heritage over several centuries from the French, Spanish, and Austrians resulted in flaky, sweet pastries, yeast cakes drowned in rum, and deep-fried doughballs known as zeppole, each one an ancestor of the modern doughnut.

The basic philosophy of life seemed to be: What do I care? It's none of my business. [The philosophy of Naples, Italy.]

Soccer is Italy’s favorite sport, and is played and watched all over the country. Each Sunday the great stadiums of Milan, Turin, Naples, Rome, and Bologna are filled with thousands of fans. Italian club soccer teams are among the best in the world, and regularly win international competitions. The national Italian team won soccer’s World Cup in 1982. Wages for successful players are high, and this helps to attract soccer stars from many other countries. Cycling also is very popular, as a sport to both do and watch. The Grand Tour of Italy takes place each year, following a long, grueling course over mountainous country. Many Italians forsake their favorite cafes to watch this bicycle race on television. Other popular pastimes include bowls, a game played on a sanded rink, and card games, commonly seen in cafes and bars across the nation. During August, many businesses close and workers go on vacation to the coast or mountains. The big cities are mostly deserted, except for tourists.

You’ve saved your money and bought a ticket to Fashion Week in Milan. All the world’s great clothing designers will be showing their startling and beautiful designs. You’ll be one of the first to see them! Or picture yourself in Rome. You’re at a performance of the opera Aïda, written by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. You’re seated amid eighteen-hundred-year-old ruins under a starry sky, listening to magnificent music. You’ve got your snowboard and warm clothing so you can glide down the slopes the world’s greatest skiers took during the 2006 Winter Olympics near Turin. Or perhaps it’s summer, and you’re going to explore the sea caves of Capri, off the coast of Naples. Later, you can take a look at the towering columns at Agrigento, among the temples the ancient Greeks built on the island of Sicily long before Italy existed. In any one of these places, you might be one of the millions of tourists who visit Italy every year. But alongside the tourists are Italians, also appreciative of the wonders of their own country.

Rumbling Mountains Four active volcanoes shake the southern Apennines. One of these, Mount Vesuvius, lies on the shore of the Bay of Naples. The people who lived near it two thousand years ago didn’t know it was a volcano. Then, in A.D. 79, Vesuvius suddenly blew its top and hot ash filled the sky, burying the city of Pompeii and neighboring towns. Over the centuries, Vesuvius has erupted again from time to time, often with little warning. Mount Etna, on the island of Sicily, is more than three times higher than Vesuvius. It is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, producing frequent lava flows. Italy’s other two active volcanoes, Stromboli and Vulcano, belong to a group of islands called the Aeolians, off the northern coast of Sicily. Earthquakes also strike Italy. In 1693, an estimated one hundred thousand people died in an earthquake in Sicily. The most deadly recent quake in Italy occurred near Naples in 1980. It killed three thousand people.

Buried Cities During the Roman Empire, wealthy Romans took vacations in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The people in these towns did not know that nearby Mount Vesuvius doomed them. On August 24 in the year A.D. 79, the top blew off the mountain. Hot rock and ash buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. An estimated five thousand people died when their houses collapsed or they choked to death on the ash. After the Roman Empire ended, the people in neighboring cities forgot Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the sixteenth century, an architect named Domenico Fontana found evidence that cities were buried under 20 feet (6 m) of earth. It was another two hundred years before anyone began digging. In the 1800s, archaeologists were stunned to discover the perfectly preserved forms of people who had died trying to flee the volcano. They also uncovered graceful courtyards and beautiful homes with elegant tile floors and statues. These discoveries helped scientists learn what the daily life of the ancient Romans might have been like. In 2002, they found that the port area along the Gulf of Naples had houses built on stilts. Still more mysteries wait to be uncovered.

The Coming of the Greeks The southern part of the Italian boot is close to Greece, and several Greek cultures influenced he cultures of Italy. People from the Greek city of Corinth settled on Sicily. Starting about 734 B.C., they built a city called Syracuse on the island’s east coast. The Greeks ruled this city, and the Sicilians were enslaved. The Greeks established other cities on the mainland, in a cluster known as Magna Graecia, which means “Great Greece” in Latin, the language of ancient Rome. A later Greek city, called Poseidonia after Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, flourished in about 550 B.C. When Italic people conquered the city, which was located south of Naples, they changed its name to Paestum. The ruins of Greek temples there are among the best-preserved Greek structures anywhere.

Naples and Pompeii Today we took the express train south to Naples. The guide on our city tour pointed out some of the magnificent cathedrals. We also explored the National Archaeological Museum. It contains some of the finest treasures in the world. It has coins, paintings, household items, and other artifacts from nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum. In A.D. 79 when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, these ancient cities were covered with a thick layer of hot ash and pumice stone. Thousands of people died. When archaeologists excavated the city more than 200 years ago, they found intact houses, temples, and shops. They even unearthed a bakery with bread still in the oven!

Glorious Food Italians are known the world over for their food. Each region of Italy enjoys its own kind of cooing. For example, in Naples, pasta is served with a tomato-based sauce, while in the north, it is more often served with a white cheese sauce. The people of Genoa often put pesto, a flavorful mixture of basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and grated cheese, on their pasta. The grated cheese called Parmesan originated in the area around Parma. Italians also invented many other cheeses, including Gorgonzola, mozzarella, provolone, and ricotta. No one knows when pizza was invented, but the people of Naples made it popular. At first, pizza was a simple flatbread topped with tomato and garlic. Since then, it has evolved into countless variations, served all over Italy and the world. Italians tend to eat a light breakfast of coffee and perhaps a small bun. Lunch is often the main meal, while dinner tends to be lighter. Italian meals may include antipasti, an array of vegetables, cold cuts, and seafood; a pasta dish; a main course of meat or fish; a salad; and cheese and fruit. Bread is served with every meal. Italy is justly famous for its ice cream, which is called gelato. Fresh gelato is made regularly at ice cream shops called gelaterias. Italians are just as likely to gather, discussing sports and the world, in a gelateria as in a coffee shop. Many Italians drink a strong, dark coffee called espresso, which is served in tiny cups. Another type of Italian coffee, cappuccino, is espresso mixed with hot, frothed milk. Both espresso and cappuccino have become popular in North America. Meanwhile, many Italians are becoming increasingly fond of American-style fast food, a trend that bothers some Italians. In general, dinner is served later at night in southern Italy than in northern Italy. This is because many people in the south, as in most Mediterranean regions, traditionally took naps in the afternoon during the hottest part of the day. These naps are rapidly disappearing as a regular part of life, although many businesses still shut down for several hours in the early afternoon.

Looking up, Missouri saw a formation of low-flying P-47's on the horizon, heading up the coast from Naples...Sergeant Missouri laughed aloud. "They're sending us the Air Force, Chico, and we made it with a donkey," he said.

The pizzas keep coming: parmigiana di melanzane, planks of eggplant mixed with tomato and Parmesan, roasted in the wood-fired oven until dense and sticky with flavor, then used to crown a pillow-soft disc of dough; la pinsa conciata, a poetic union of pork lard and fig jam and an ancient goat cheese once on the brink of extinction; calzone con scarola riccia, a featherweight shell of blistered impasto stuffed with wilted escarole and anchovy and a tickle of dried chili.

My friend Mimmo, who owns three men’s shops in Rome but who comes from Naples where his father was in the same business, says that nowadays, after two days in Naples, he can’t wait to leave again. “Life in Rome is not easy, but at least there are some certainties. In Naples, forget it. The only thing that counts there is prepotenza,” roughly, bullying or arrogance.

Angus smiled. “So nothing’s certain, then?” “That’s right,” said Big Lou. “Except death and taxes,” interjected Matthew. “Isn’t that how the saying goes?” “They don’t pay taxes in Italy,” observed Angus. “I knew a painter in Naples who never paid taxes–ever. Very good painter too.” “What happened to him?” asked Matthew. “He died,” said Angus. 33.

Ferdinando [King of Naples] resolv’d, in good Earnest, to try how to compromise the Affair of the Castles; being persuaded, that that when this Obstacle was remov'd, Matters would easily return into the fame peaceable Channel. But by removing the Causes, the Effects that sprung from them are not always remov'd. For, as it frequently happens, that Resolutions taken out of Fear seldom appear sufficient to the Fearful.

Perhaps nowhere else, though, was the contribution of the private ‘universal’ library to the progress of the early Enlightenment, moderate and radical, more crucial than in Italy, where the impact of censorship, the unavailability of foreign books, and the decay of the great libraries all conspired to create a situation in which a few medium and large private libraries containing rare foreign works and ‘libri prohibiti’ provided the indispensable channel through which flowed the philosophical ferment of the late seventeenth century, and later. In Naples in the 1680s and 1690s, the library of Giuseppe Valletta served as the headquarters and discussion forum of the philosophical novatores.71 More impressive still, and vital to the nurturing of the Early Enlightenment in Florence, were the 25,000 books and 2,873 manuscripts belonging to Magliabechi, a bibliomaniac who sought, read, wrote about, and discussed books to the point of neglecting everything else, even his personal appearance.72 A bibliographical titan, who influenced many without ever having published a book himself, and in whose honour a celebratory medal was cast, portraying him seated, holding a book, Magliabechi, like Naudé and Leibniz, considered universality—the encompassing of the whole of human thought and knowledge