Subject: Napoli
Hi again!
I had said that we had spent the next full day in Naples.
This is a wild city, so different from anything else I had seen before. So narrow, so dense, so frantic. Some of the streets were very wide, like big thoroughfares cutting through the city. They were lined with big massive, almost monumental buildings. But as soon as you turn around the corner you realize some of these "fronts" were just as much backs!
I remember one of these buildings that had a big arch cut into the corner. When you look into this archway, your eyes follow a relatively narrow stairway cutting right through the center of the building! It is like an open-air courtyard, completely lined with doors, little entrance porches and balconies, streetlights, and plants and laundry spilling out into the space from all directions. You realize that THESE are the front doors, and THIS is really the "street" that these people live on!
The feel I had for this little street seemed to characterize much of what I saw in Naples. Little streets, almost alleys at times, winding ever further and further into the fabric of the city, so compact as could only be in a city that has been inhabited for hundreds of years.
And absolutely overflowing with life!
Although we did make several stops that day, we also spent a good deal of time walking through the city as a group, just following where Cinzia was taking us, looking around us, and taking care not to be run over by a motorini flying by! (these are the TINY little mopeds that we saw all over S. Italy. (and probably everywhere else in the country, too, I just wasn't there!) Matt was telling me that they seem to be seen as the ideal family vehicle here- dad driving, while mom sits on the back, carrying the baby, the dog sits where your feet should be, and the groceries are tacked on somewhere too! And of course, noone wears socks here-even all dressed up for work with a suit and tie!) But anyway, I was very glad we were following Cinzia, because I think it would have taken us forever to work our way through the maze of buildings, let alone all the people and vehicles and commotion on the streets!
But there was simply so much going on continuously, and that didn't stop at all once we got to wider streets with big broad sidewalks! These streets are a complete zoo- traffic lights and lanes are considered suggestions, and at times the sidewalk is just another lane to drive on!
This is cause for its own brand of culture shock: in Dresden I marvelled at how people follow the walk-don't walk signs religiously. If it is green you can cross, but if it is red, you stand there waiting for the light to change, even if there is no vehicle in sight for kilometers! I thought that people there took traffic signals to the point of absurdity- watch the lights, not the traffic (or lack thereof!) But in Naples they went to the other extreme! I don't remember if there were any crosswalks painted or anything, but I think it was kind of irrelevant; if you need to cross the street, and there is a momentary break in traffic, go! Even if it means crossing only one lane at a time, standing in the middle until the next clears. You have to act quickly: if you stop to think, it's too late. The traffic certainly followed these rules. On one hand I would say people there are terrible drivers. On the other, it was a wonder to me that I didn't see any accidents. The drivers here are so quick, always having a sense of exactly what's going on around them at all times, that they always know exactly when they can change lanes, or cut BETWEEN two lanes! I guess the best comparison I can think of is to imagine the whole road full of New York City taxi drivers, but in vehicles a quarter of the size!
We stopped at Palazzo Reale, which was this huge palace that defined one side of an open square.
The other side was another big building, cylindrical and domed, but with a Greek temple-style front. It had huge arms of an arcade reaching way around to either side.
Supposedly it was inspired by the Pantheon, but because of the arms it reminded me more of St. Peters. And when you stand in front of this building and look across the square to the right of Palazzo Reale, you can see some low-wide pine trees in front of the bay, with Vesuvius in the not-so-distant background on the otherside. The bay was filled with big ships, including from the military. I looked to see if Bud's ship was there, even though I didn't think he had left yet!
But anyway, for Palazzo Reale, my notes are pretty sketchy and photos quite lacking, so I can't say too much about it. But the whole outside was done in two colors: a warm brownish grey, which comes from the lava, and a deep reddish orange, a very rich, but very soft color. This is a recurrent color in Naples, and I guess it is because the sunset is often this color here, as opposed to more of an ochre in Rome.
We went inside, and I just remember the most massive staircase I had ever seen. It was so monumental, a big central potion leading up to a huge landing, then splitting in two, continuing on in both directions. On this landing was a huge statue, gold-gilded, with streaks shooting out of it like rays of sunshine. When you stand there you feel like you are so out of scale, that each step should be as high as a person for it to make sense.....uh, or something like that. (sorry, I know that didn't make much sense!) I tried to do a sketch of it, but had so much trouble, everything was at such a massive scale, that I couldn't seem to get that across in my drawing.
We walked through the Galleria Umberto I, which was a shop-lined street covered by a vaulted glass ceiling.
It was built in the late 1800's, and made me think of an early shopping mall: although it was really open air, its temperature was much more controlled- it kept the warmth in in the winter, but was still ventilated in the summer. It was a pedestrian street, and there were people milling about, walking through, and going from store to store. I don't know if the facades of the buildings were from the same time, or if they were already existing, but I thought it was kind of neat: if you ignore the fact that there is a roof overhead, it was easy to imagine you were still completely outside.
We stopped to see the Post Office, built by Guisseppe Viccaro (?) in 1922, when Mussolini came to power with the establishment of the Fascist party. It is a huge, almost scarily massive building, that was built in reference to his plan to create the 3rd Rome (1st ancient Roman Empire, 2nd Holy Roman Empire). It had a sweeping, simple rounded facade, with a huge entrance and little square windows on the upper floors. Its design and location creates a piazza in the front that holds two streets together, but it was very controversial, because to be built a convent
had to be torn down.
We went inside for a few minutes to sketch, and I thought the horizontal grating and the louvered windows made some cool shadows. There was something about this building that I liked, its clean lines and all, but at the same time it was so completely devoid of anything on a human scale that I thought it was kind of sterile and ominous.
We continued along and saw a church whose facade was built of square stones whose surfaces came out to points like pyramids, so that the whole front of the building was kind of spiny like an armadillo.
Which made for a funny contrast against the doors and windows, whose frames were much more delicate and refined, more of a Renaissance-style.
But then we went into the cloister of the next church, which was much more soothing.
It had pointed-vaulted ceilings, very smooth, but with elaborate designs painted on them.
The path through the garden was lined with coulmns and benches, all covered with brightly colored, floral patterned tiles- yellows and greens and blues.
This church had the most amazing nativity scene, built within half a hemisphere. All the people and the scenery-rocks, mountains, houses, were all made to look like this area, and everything was so incredibly detailed, and done in vivid, realistic colors. I think the most fascinating thing about it was the forced perspective created within this scene. The size of everyone and everything decreased dramatically as they got closer to the half-dome that was painted as the sky. It really did seem to go much further back into space than just to the boundaries of the dome! It was done to look like twilight, so that the sky at the horizon was still very light, but that there were lights in the houses, and a huge glow at the manger.
In the afternoon we went to the National Archaeological Museum, which I also thought was fantastic.
There was one huge gallery filled with Greek (and Roman?) marble statues that I wanted to stay in forever. (yes, Naples is definitely on my list of places to come back to, with this museum as one of the priority stops!) I had never really been all that interested in ancient Greek stuff. (ok, a statue, another statue missing an arm, a vase, another vase. etc.) but this stuff really caught my attention. Each piece was a huge statue of a person, or a group of people, and they all had so much LIFE to them! You could see every muscle in their bodies moving!
There was one, called Gruppo del Toro Farnese, that was of 4 or 5 people wrestling with a raging bull, grabbing at its horns, lassoing it, etc. It was all lifesize, if not bigger, and it was all carved out of one piece of marble!
You could see the tension in every muscle, the struggle and determination on their faces, capes flying as they spun around, even the little dog in the corner barking at the whole scene, trying to be a part of it all! It was amazing!
So that was Naples!
Talk to you soon!
Lots of love, Cory :)
"There is no joy in possession without sharing." -Erasmus of Rotterdam
No comments:
Post a Comment