Roma & Nápoles
So here we are in Lent. A Catholic’s mind perhaps turns toward Rome.
A few Catholic bodies turn up there as well, for the big finale.
You can aim your digicam at the quarter million heads in front of you at the Piazza San Pietro on Easter. What you will almost see, beyond the hundreds of thousands of heads, and on Jumbo-trons placed here and there amid the throngs, is a tiny white figure, stooped, ashen, supported by two large young acolytes, as he shuffles from spot to spot on the stage. He is choking on the smoke from the censer he is too feeble to swing away from his own mouth and nose. He is the former Hitler Youth, former head of The Inquisition, and now the man the Catholic Church has chosen to impress his Christ-y-ish vigor upon the next generation of ex-Catholics in training. He can hardly move on his own. Yet 250,000 digicams are whirring away.
You came to The Eternal City for this???
Do yourself a favor. Head south instead! Naples is the place to spend Easter!
Naples’s fortunes and reputation have fallen hard over the twentieth century. The Nazis occupied the city, then the Allies bombed the shit out of it. Their unemployment rate, dropout rate, and crime rate are the worst in Europe. Their median income is the lowest in western Europe, or among any cities whose currency is the euro. Naples is also the most densely packed city in Europe.
That’s right – as with many of the world’s best cities, Naples is dirty, dangerous, and over-crowded. On the upside, there’s no particularly safe neighborhood in Naples, so you can head out and ramble anywhere you choose, without needing to worry about wandering into tough neighborhoods – they’re all tough!
Worse, we no longer look at the city as a shining citadel of learning and cosmopolitan sophistication, the nursery of philosophers, the pride of empires. Fittingly perhaps, we now associate Naples most with song. Funiculi, Funicula, O Sole Mio, La Donna e mobile, Yourna a Sorriento, and, of course, Santa Lucia. Wait, did I mention that pizza was invented here…how cool is THAT???
Fishermen, hookers, thieves, day laborers, craftsmen, poor mothers and soccer playing children, a constant whine of poorly tuned scooters, a dizzying garbage dump of open air markets selling anything you can imagine, an auditory barrage of beeping and sirens, shouts and laughs, songs and swears, screeches of tires and banging of pots, resound through the alleys of the Santa Lucia ghetto, spreading languorously along the waterfront, in the shadows of medieval castles and renaissance cathedrals, restive and boisterous and grabbing life by the throat.
Then, as the shadows lengthen, and the sun sets beyond Capri, they stroll arm in arm, slowly, so very slowly, thick as ants in the shabby streets, and after a while they settle in at seats on the cobblestone, watching Vesuvius and Capri fade to grey and purple in the distance, as the lights of Sorrento start to twinkle across the bay, and the moon rises. Fact is, it was ‘round about this time of day that I had to teach Girl Friday how to walk even slower than she normally walks.
They smoke and they drink and they eat pasta with red sauce and drink earthy vintages born of volcanic soil. The men eye you up and down, appraisingly, as you pass. The women do the same. They make eye contact, and hold it – a rarity in dangerous crowded cities. Still….there are two sexes, after all. Then they go home and make love, loudly, and hear their neighbors doing the same. Gives the traveler a mind to go and do the same.
Is it any wonder Virgil chose to die here?
Os artigos acima são cortesia de seu autor, A.C., direto da Itália para nossa redação.