Town Mouse
One of the wonderful things about being a town mouse is the ease with which you can pop over to other cities for a few days.
My most recent minibreak, via the excellent easyjet, was to the grand, ancient and tragic city of Naples. This jumble of cobbled, medieval alleyways, tiny shops, soft, yellow stone, beautiful architecture, shouting, graffiti and horn-honking doesn’t really consider itself to be a part of Italy. It is actually a Greek city, as the owner of my B&B was quick to point out. In his view, things went downhill after Giuseppe Garibaldi’s unification of Italy in 1871. That’s when Naples lost its money and power.
The word Naples or Napoli is a contraction of the Greek nea polis meaning ‘new city’, the name given on its founding in around 600BC. The original idea was to create a resort – something like Brighton or Bath. According to Gibbon, Horace said Naples ‘long cherished the language and manners of a Grecian colony; and the choice of Virgil had ennobled this elegant retreat, which attracted the lovers of repose and study from the noise, the smoke, and the laborious opulence of Rome.’
Lovers of repose and study may be a little disappointed by the Naples of today. I’ve never been to such a frenetic and noisy place. There are vast quantities of people everywhere, and they all shout at each other. You bump into everyone while walking down the narrow alleys and dodging the suicidal moped riders. You happen across young trumpeters. Small cafés pump out terrible, poppy reggae music. You are assailed by Romanian beggars in the cafés. It’s exhausting.
My B&B owner, though, has clung on to the ancient tradition of Naples, and keeps a library stocked with philosophy books which you can read on the terrace.
The Camorra, the local Mafia, aren’t far beneath the surface. As well as controlling drug and prostitution rackets, they make enormous amounts of money out of migrants, flour, cement and luxury goods.
One small benefit of the Camorra is that there is no Uber in Naples. The Silicon Valley taxi service would never dare come here – they would get their tyres slashed. The bad thing about it is that young boys from poor areas are sucked into a life of crime and then get killed or put in prison. The Camorra murders people who get in its way – even priests.
Layer upon archaeological layer are readily visible on the streets and beneath them. You’ll be walking through a square and will suddenly happen upon a hole on the ground, protected by glass, through which you can see crumbling Greek ruins. I visited the catacombs under the 13th-century church of San Lorenzo Maggiore. Here we were shown whole Roman streets complete with bread ovens, beneath which could be seen the remains of Greek streets. Instead of street lights, the Romans put down white paving stones to reflect moonlight and enable late-night shopping.
Another underground treasure is the catacombs of San Gennaro, a vast network of burial chambers, early Christian churches and frescoes. Our young guide had been saved from poverty by the priest who runs the catacombs and the church above it. He told us the underground chambers started life in the 2nd century AD as a grave for a rich Christian family. You can see a lovely wall painting of a 6th-century Roman Christian family here, all with their hands held up, the early way to pray.
The ancient Neapolitan love for scrawling on walls continues. It’s impossible to find much space that hasn’t been graffitied. On one wall, written in French, were the words ‘Touristes partout, justice nulle part’ – ‘tourists everywhere, justice nowhere’. There are also plenty of anarchy signs and less sophisticated inscriptions: ‘Raverz’ was sprayed on the vast door to the 15thcentury palazzo which housed my B&B.
In the evenings everyone comes out to stroll around, talk and smoke. You eat pizza at places such as Da Michele, which doesn’t bother with a varied menu: it offers Margherita, Margherita with extra cheese or Margherita with no cheese, all cooked in a vast oven exactly like the one preserved in the subterranean Roman market. The lighting is bright, you are squashed in with other diners and you have to wait at least half an hour for a place. Everyone taps away at their smartphones non-stop.
It’s ancient, medieval and modern all at the same time. Laundry hangs out of windows and old men lower baskets on ropes from the third floor to street level where a young man fills the basket with groceries. The poor crowd into tiny, one-room apartments which face directly on to the street. Vesuvius looms over the city.
Naples – the ancient new city – taught this town mouse an eternal lesson in urban living. It makes you feel that all your earthly striving and worrying is for nothing. We will be dust soon and so we might as well enjoy our existence in the here and now.
‘Uber would never dare come here – they would get their tyres slashed’