Q&A with pizza chef Ciro Oliva

WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES NAPLES SO INVENTIVE?

Naples isn’t just beautiful

— we’re free here. It’s a working class city, and it’s bellissimo. There’s an incredible mix of people and the whole world comes here. Day after day, great artists and photographers arrive, and everyone weaves together culturally. It’s like Bangkok — people either love it or hate it.

WHERE ARE YOUR FAVOURITE PLACES TO SEE THIS ‘WEAVING TOGETHER’ IN ACTION?

I love Capodimonte — director Sylvain Bellenger has brought countless important artists to the city since he arrived in 2015, and he’s made the park extraordinary. I also love the Museo Madre, the modern art gallery. Its current photography exhibition, for example, is dedicated to artists from the South and it really evokes what I see as ‘Neapolitanness’.

HOW ABOUT MODERN ARTISANS?

I really like Alberto Squillace, who makes leather gloves in Sanità. Naples has always been known for its leather workers, and in Sanità they were spectacular, these working-class men producing incredible gloves. Alberto’s shop Omega is emblematic of that.