Monday 2 June: Off to Naples, and an unplanned trip to Salerno

When we made our reservations for the train to Naples, we made the mistake of thinking that the agent actually knew English. We told him that we wanted to leave Rome around 9:30 am. It’s a good think we checked the tickets closely the night before we left; he had us arriving in Naples at 9:30 instead, which meant that we had to leave Rome at 7:30! Luckily we are both early risers, and the extra two hours would end up being useful for us.

Napoli is a colorful city. By “colorful,” I mean “frequently lacking in 21^st-century conveniences often taken for granted by many Americans.” Naples is a big city, 3 million people in the metropolitan area, and it is one of the poorest large cities in Europe. For centuries Naples has been a study in contrasts: home to famous artists and musicians and their wealthy royal patrons, but also to some of the greatest poverty in the Mediterranean. An independent nation for a long time, the Kingdom of Naples was often ruled by foreigners, including the French and Spanish. It became part of the united Kingdom of Italy in 1860. Modern Italian politics often focus on the widespread poverty, poor living conditions, and immense corruption in the local government of Naples. Most recently, the refuse workers and government have been at odds, and there are parts of Naples where trash has not been removed for six or seven months. The European Union has found Italy in violation of human rights for this, and has ordered the Italian federal government to intervene. Garbage is gone from the tourist areas, but our train drove through many areas of low-income high rises surrounded by trash heaps.

As we approached the city, the train ran parallel to the subway for a couple of stops. We were waiting for our stop, which had not yet appeared. I finally asked a train employee if this was our stop, and he said yes, but don’t get off yet. Then the train started moving, and I asked when we could get off. The guy said at the next stop. I asked where the next stop was, and he said Salerno! If you know Italian geography, you know that Salerno is a city past the Bay of Naples, about a half hour by express train. Gary and I were sort of annoyed, but it was not a big hassle, since we just rode for a half hour, saw the Bay and the volcano, and got off at Salerno. We took pics to show that we were there, and then bought tickets back to Naples. The whole thing took an extra two hours, so it was a good thing that we left Rome two hours early. It all worked out in the end.

In Naples we decided to walk to out hotel, since its website said it was “a few meter’s walk from the train station.” It was in fact about a half mile away, and none of the streets ran directly to it. Gary did eventually find it for us though. Hotel Caravaggio is right next to the Duomo, the cathedral of Naples. Right outside the hotel is a huge spire, built in the seventeenth century, to thank Naples’ patron saint for saving the city from plague. Our room was big, clean, and comfortable except for temperature. It was sort of warm, and we opened the large windows into the courtyard for ventilation. This also allowed us to hear a woman scream constantly at her huge brood of undisciplined children.

Gary and I cleaned up, unpacked, and strolled through Spaccanapoli, the old central part of town, a neighborhood of winding streets, shops, and five- to ten-story apartment buildings, mostly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We would explore this area in more detail later; now we were on our way to the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, home to an outstanding collection of antiquities, including many of the most important and well-known finds from Pompeii. The building is nearly two hundred years old, and the museum is in the process of renovation. The renovations are excellent. Rather than cramming dozens of pieces into one small space, a few select pieces are displayed, often against a plain but brightly-colored background, which shows the pieces off much better. Another practice I wish more museums would adopt is how the Naples museum is displaying some of its architectural fragments. Pieces of columns, arches, doorways, ceilings, and so on are presented at the height and angle of their original position. For example, there was an ornately-carved marble fragment from inside the top of a large doorway. Most museums would just have it on a shelf or stuck on a wall. Here, it was suspended from the ceiling, facing down, at the height of the entrance that it once decorated. You can walk underneath it, look up, and see it just how a first-century Roman would have. Column capitals, wall fragments, and other architectural elements were also displayed this way.

The museum is full of frescos, mosaics, bronzes, and glass from the ancient world, especially Pompeii. The concept of ancient Roman (or Egyptian!) glass astounds me, considering how I have gone through martini glasses and other stemware. The art in this collection rivals the Capitoline and Vatican Museums in Rome as far as antiquities go. A famous part of the collection is the Gabinetto Segreto, the “Secret Cabinet.” This houses many works of erotic art from Pompeii. Established in the early nineteenth century, the Secret Cabinet used to be off limits to everyone but scholars. Now anyone can enter it and see the bronzes, marble statues, frescos, and mosaics in the collection. If you are unfamiliar with classical erotic art, just search gabinetto segreto or roman erotic art on Google images. Make sure you turn off your safe search filters or you’ll miss the best stuff! Some of the pieces are strange to modern eyes, a lot aren’t, and many are as amusing to us as they probably were to the Romans. Gary and I had the great good fortune to visit the Secret Cabinet just as a group of school kids arrived. They were in the perfect age range: eleven to fifteen, and included both boys and girls. The girls made sure that everyone know just how shocked and embarrassed they were. On the other hand, the boys were almost rolling on the floor laughing, pointing out to their friends their favorite details on each piece, and sometimes offering anatomical comparisons. It really was the highlight of the visit.

We left the museum and walked back to our hotel, stopping at the cathedral on our way home. The Duomo was literally around the corner; in fact, two walls of the courtyard around our piazza are formed by an angle of the church’s nave and transept. There was a nice variety of art and monuments in the cathedral, from the medieval period, through the Renaissance, Baroque and up to the present. We had dinner at a pizzeria in Spaccanapoli, only about three blocks from us, and then went to bed early, since tomorrow we were leaving early for Pompeii.