An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 67. Napoli

The “what I did on my holidays” entries to this diary are never the best ones. I think that’s because I write them from a mild sense of obligation; since there’s effort involved in travel, I might as well get something (a post!) out of it. Not a great motivation for writing really. Or maybe it’s because I think the eventfulness of a travel experience will translate to a good entry, but it doesn’t. As someone against eventful writing, I should know this.

I’ve always tried, however, to relate these entries back to Escapological lessons beyond the simple “free movement” theme of travel: the attitudes inspired by travel that might be more generally helpful in life, the ways another society can look and how we might emulate that ideal. I think I’m starting from that point of view this time so maybe my Naples entry will be better than, say, this slightly empty one about Berlin.

So we went to Naples. We stayed in the Spanish Quarter, which is part of the crumbly historic side of town. There’s a fancier side of town up on the mountain, which has lovely tree-lined streets and feels more like Paris or Rome, but we had decided to stay in the thick of life. Travel guides to Naples tend to start with “don’t be afraid of Naples’ reputation for crime,” which people also say about Glasgow, which is where I live. So I wasn’t afraid at all.

Still, the streets of the Spanish Quarter are certainly vibrant. Everyone shouts all the time, car horns beep, radios blare, street kids zoom around on motorised scooters, and we regularly saw seemingly unironic Catholic shrines to footballer Diego Maradona. Laundry was strung to dry between awning-capped balconies, and pet birds in cages chirruped musically. We even witnessed picnic baskets being lowered on strings from balconies by old women, presumably by arrangement, so that grocers could fill them with sundries. It’s the sort of thing I’ve seen in Istanbul and imagine seeing in places like Morocco. I’d never felt this lovely chaos vibe in Central Europe before.

The residents of the Spanish Quarter are clearly poorer than the ones of the mountain, but everyone seems to be having a good time. Despite the rough and tumble, nobody was doing anything obviously wrong. This contrasts with some working-class neighborhoods I’ve called home in Britain, where the prevailing mood is one of being steadily crushed from above while people generally slouch around in shame and live in fear of being mugged in an underpass. I’m probably being unfair to my own country, but in any event Naples didn’t feel like this at all.

My own idea of a good society tends toward the clean and orderly Scandinavian model with high taxes and a sense of communal ownership. “Private sufficiency, public luxury,” is a good aim, I think. I’m told, however, that there’s an inevitable dark side to this (usually involving hostility to newcomers and the shaming of idlers) and that it’s preferable and more direct to favour an anarchic Neapolitan model. While mulling this over, we heard a cheer go up in the streets of the Spanish Quarter, which, we think, was a response to the news that the far-right Brothers of Italy had won the General Election. It sent a shiver down our spines.

So that’s my socioeconomic notes out of the way. One of the first great things we did was visit the Archaeological Museum, which is filled with miraculous findings from Pompeii such as 2000-year-old glassware. There was a rainstorm on the day we visited and, since it was so humid, the museum staff had opened the balcony doors overlooking a central courtyard of tropical trees. This meant we could see and hear the harsh rainfall drubbing against palm leaves at all times and we enjoyed the rumble of thunder rolling around the outside of the building. This was an appropriately atmospheric backdrop for looking at exhibits from Pompeii.

The weather in Naples was fairly bad, which was bad luck because Naples gets over 300 days of sunshine in a year. We don’t travel for the purpose of lounging in the sun, so this didn’t slow us down or disappoint too much but we could have lived without the drenching we got on certain days. We remained light on our feet, visiting museums and galleries on days when heavy rain was expected, while remaining poised to strike out to Pompeii (which is entirely outdoors, no building’s roof surviving the eruption) when a less rainy day was forecast. That’s probably a good tactic for life: remain dexterous, even mercurial, and roll with the blows. Escapologists were better adapted to the pandemic lockdowns than people whose lives are grounded in habit or formality.

We finally made it to Pompeii for real. We saw the famous casts of human bodies, the “beware of the dog” sign, and the x-rated artwork. The scale of the place is astonishing (it really was/is a city) and the presence of Mount Vesuvius, which is still active, was thrilling. We’ve seen active volcanoes before (in Hawaii) but we knew from a recent documentary that lava volcanoes like Hawaii’s are a bit of a joke compared to the grey ash volcanoes like Vesuvius, which will vaporize you pretty much immediately.

Pompeii is worth putting on your bucket list, folks, as it more than lives up to its reputation. Go, go, go! We visited Herculaneum too, which is also worth seeing, but the idea that it’s better than Pompeii (apparently because it’s “smaller and better preserved”) isn’t really true and is just something people say. Pompeii’s vastness is awe-inspiring in its own right and most of the detail and sheer diversity of detail (columns, arches, frescoes, artwork, pools, mosaics, the freakin’ amphitheater) knocks Herculaneum into a cocked hat.

It’s easy to get lost in Pompeii, which was all part of the fun, and when we saw one of the famous penis etchings in the stonework, a French tourist opined that “maybe it is pointing the way for us.”

Okay. That’s enough about my vacation. I hope you survived this post. I’ll return to more directly Escapological musings very soon.

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