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Here's Some Great Places
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Napoli
See Naples And Die Utter the names Positano, Amalfi or Capri to any one of your friends and watch them roll their eyes to heaven and moan. Provoking a discourse in which phrases such as "waters bluer than Howlin' Wolf," or "died and gone to heaven" are mixed liberally with "bella" and "magnifico." Utter Naples and in a low tone you get "watch your wallet...and your car" sometimes mixed with "fabulous pizza." The whole package makes for a little Campania mania - the hopeless infatuation with Sorrento, Ravello, Capri, Ischia, Positano, Pompei, Amalfi and its embarrassing father Naples. Here in perhaps the western world's last bastion of old world romance is a prize precariously balanced between the raucous scene of Naples, along the menacing puff of Vesuvius and down south to Salerno. Along the coast these towns collectively offer narrow passageways, steep cliffs, fat tour buses and a long history of tourism.
Ever since the Roman Emperors escaped overheated Rome by building pleasure palaces around the Bay of Naples - Pompei and Herculaneum - the idea of a vacation has been around. Back then Roman travel agents urged their countrymen to "See Naples and Die." Rather prophetic in light of Vesuvius, but ever since those ancient times this pithy phrase has been interpreted in two opposing ways:
Most guidebooks approach Naples with a degree of circumspection, treating her as a remote cousin who'd be presentable if only she toned down her blush, watched her mouth, and did not try to get into the wallet of her first date. But this also can have something to do with the fact that Naples, the city that has given women Enrico Caruso, men Sophia Loren, and pizza to the world may also be the first city to make social disorder into an art form. The Napoletanese do not stand in lines, or fill out forms, or stop for traffic signs ("it is a suggestion" they would say). They will talk your ear off, criticize the way you dress, offer sweets and with a reassuring smile they will always, always give you the wrong directions. In an official capacity they will either break the rules for you or invent new ones, in shops and restaurants they will either charge too much or too little (although the former is much more common) and do so with a southern flourish. On Naples's Piazza Garibaldi you can buy a pig's organ on a stick served with a slice of lemon, and watch eight-year old scugnizzi - street children - puff on Marlboros while casually tossing firecrackers into traffic. Fireworks, along with slamming doors, impromptu arias, screams, ambulance sirens mixed with howling cats are an essential part of the Neapolitan soundtrack, albeit a bit drowned under the weight of Italy's worst traffic problem where three quarter of a million drivers chase each other around a street plan that has hardly changed since the Roman times. Naples history is in fact older than Rome. Greeks came first naming it Neapolis ("new city") and under the Roman Empire Naples was considered an outpost and living remnant of Greek culture in Italy, much as New Orleans retained its je ne sais quoi for 19th century North America. If the Greeks gave the city its name, the long period of Spanish control (15th - 17th century) saw the construction of the frilly Baroque churches now half abandoned with bushes growing out of the cornices. In 1707 Naples passed under the rule of Archduke Charles of Austria, which was quickly snatched by The Bourbon. The Bourbons were a dismal ruling family, corrupt and cruel, but the first of them Charles III (1734-59) was a tremendous builder and patron of the arts. An indifferent ruler he spent lavishly to make Naples a great cultural center that would justify his exalted opinion of himself. He hired architects and artists to carry his many projects, among them the building in 1738 of the cream and gold Opera House, which he named, after his name saint, San Carlo. This marked the beginning of a long history of rivalry between San Carlo and La Scala. To this day the members of the San Carlo opera look down on their colleagues up north as a band of promising upstarts who could stand to take their jobs a little more seriously. Sooooooo Neapolitan. Today besides the pizza, besides the southern charm, opera and the birth of the Italian language and culture, Naples more recently owes its fame on the Grand Tour to the spectacle of a collection of erotic art from Pompeii, first put on display in 1845 and then locked away by the Vatican for its lewd an sinful nature, until only a few years ago. The Forbidden Art is now in a special wing of the National Archaeological Museum, where children are not allowed to enter and adults are given a gentle warning. Some artifacts came from bordellos, while others were displayed in private homes and were supposed to ward off ill fortune. All of the artwork have some amount of fornication, penis and animals mixed liberally in. It was wild time. For your viewing is the painting of Priapus in the famous House of Vettii where a huge penis is placed on one scale of a balance, while a purse full of coins is on the other scale. Nothing is subtle about Naples.
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