This guide to the city of Naples and its surroundings (here pictured in its first and second editions) is written and researched and photographed by Julius Honnor.
"Offers of pizza you can't refuse. The best sights. Bars and clubs. One famous volcano. Ruins to die for. Festivals. Thermal spas. Where to eat, drink and sleep. Anarchic Vespas. Islands in the bay. Kids' stuff. Liquefied saints and sanctified footballers."
Naples, stuck between the worlds most famous volcano and the deep blue sea, is beautiful and ugly in equal measure. It can be an intimidating place anarchic and only sporadically law-abiding. The traffic is terrible and peace and quiet is hard to find. But its an extraordinarily vivacious city, the pizzas are fantastic, opera, classical music and jazz are ingrained in its culture and the treasure trove of sights hidden away in its narrow streets is at times overwhelming. Ask an Italian from Rome or the north about Naples and they will throw up their hands in despair and tell you its a part of Africa. It is indeed dirty, overcrowded and impossibly chaotic more like Marrakesh than Milan. But probe these gentrified folk a little more and they may tell you with something approaching admiration about the Neapolitan Renaissance, the cultural rebirth of a once-grand city. Areas that were considered no-go are now reasonably safe, and some of the many churches and monuments semi-permanently closed for renovation are now genuinely restored, or at least open, at least some of the time.
The ever-present hulk of Vesuvius aside, the city and its surroundings are geographically blessed. To one side of the Bay of Naples the fruitful hills of the Sorrento Peninsula plunge to the artistically chiselled Amalfi Coast; head out to sea and the ornamental beads of Capri, Ischia and Procida rise from the blue water. Youre never far away from captivating scenery: towns and villages cling to cliffs or cluster around harbours in true picture- postcard style and views are colourful and panoramically spectacular. And if its history youre after, the once-buried wonders of Pompeii and Herculaneum to the east are only slightly more amazing than the ruined and bubbling marvels of the Campi Flegrei to the west, while to the south, crumbling Paestum is the most majestic of all.
Naples has a lot of history to get over before it can feel properly at ease with itself. It has a strong but also confused sense of civic pride and tradition: its dialect betrays its mixed parentage, particularly its Spanish and French influences. For hundreds of years it was tossed from one set of rulers to another and it retains a profound anti-establishment feeling and a distrust of outsiders.
To really understand the psyche of the city, however, it is necessary to look at the relationship between Naples and Vesuvius. Though Neapolitans will feign something like blasé indifference when asked about their volcano, the reality is much more significant. Il Dominatore, they call Vesuvius, and its glowering presence rising above the city is quite clearly a factor in both the Neapolitans endemic fatalism and in their hedonistic love of the good life. By extension it can probably be considered partly to blame for Neapolitan driving, extreme levels of superstition and the fact that around signs severely prohibiting ball-games, there will almost always be four or five games of football in progress, occasionally using the same signs for goalposts.
Text © Julius Honnor 2005,
from Footprint Naples
ISBN 1904777309, Published 01
Feb 2005. 256 Pages including 12 pages in colour; 10 colour maps; £6.99.