Napoli on Tour

“Indiana Jones!!! Da-Da-Da-Daaaah!!!.” The short, elderly, and extremely energetic guide was shouting this non stop while nimbly racing through the 2-foot wide ancient Greek aqueduct tunnels 100 feet underneath the city. We were the only two participants on this particular Napoli Sotterranea tour - offered Saturday mornings only, from an obscure address in the Spanish Quarter.

The Spanish Quarter itself is one of the more interesting neighborhoods in Naples. Geographically, it lies directly west of the City Center on a gently sloping hill. Its narrow and compact streets from a grid, the only part of Naples that strictly follows this pattern. Socially, it’s a densely populated working-class, yet somewhat eccentric, neighborhood. This is the neighborhood where you’re most likely to run into a 6-year old riding backward a Vespa motor scooter being driven by his 9-year-old sister, or one the femignelli, as members of Naples’ venerable Transsexual community are called.

Below the Spanish quarter is even more interesting - it’s home to an extensive network of underground aqueducts and cisterns, many of which were turned into air-raid shelters during the war, including the one we were currently touring. Tours were only in Italian - other than “Look, Look!,” and “Ooh, La, La!” two phrases our guide used every couple of minutes. Steve mostly took pictures, but I tried my best to combine the various things that were pointed out with a basic knowledge of Romance languages and the copious use of hand gestures from our guide to get a sense of the stories he was trying to tell us.

From what I gathered, the house above where we entered had been the house our guide and his brother had grown up in. During World War II, when they were children, they had hidden in the old cistern below that had been turned into an air-raid shelter. After the war, illegal dumping from construction had filled in much of the old air-raid shelters and underground network. Later on, when they were adults, they had re-entered and excavated this old air-raid shelter and the surrounding network and started giving tours.

“Illegal” dumping is actually a strong, word - again, “extralegal” is probably the best term. In a city like Naples, bureaucracy, building codes, and paperwork are basically taken as, well, one of the many different ways of doing things. And post-war building almost never followed this official way. We encountered an interesting example in our journey through one of the underground tunnels we found. From what we could tell, it was designed and meant for use exclusively as a storm drain. However, we saw small sewer pipes every once in a while flowing into the drain. During the post-war building boom, if it were easier and cheaper to just connect nearby buildings’ sewage systems to this storm drain instead of an actual sewer, no doubt a way was found to make it happen.

Among the other stories I managed to semi-understand were that of a pregnant woman giving birth on the stairs down to the air-raid shelter (who later on got in touch with him through a reporter), the damp air being used for the development of penicillin, and how the toilets were right next to the bottom of the stairs. Why? Well, if you’re in imminent danger of having a bomb level your house, what’s the first way your body might react?

All in all, it was a great tour. We emerged out of a nondescript door in a nondescript alley, with a nondescript middle-aged Italian woman staring at us. Those are the entrances to the fascinating underground world of Naples. Not manholes, not anything really even publicly accessible. They’re in people’s houses, or hidden in plain sight. In Naples, not just for the underground but really for anything, knowledge and access are gained through people, relationships, not through internet research or random poking around. While developing those relationships in one conversation is certainly not unheard of (Steve managed to talk his way into a Greek and Roman excavation site beneath a Church, for instance) they can often take lifetimes to develop, if not generations.

Luckily for us, there were a few organizations, institutions, and just quirky individuals (such as our aforementioned Indians Jones impersonator) who gave tours, or at least provided varying degrees of public access, to a good amount of the fascinating underground infrastructure of the cities. We got to see old air-raid shelters, catacombs, crypts, aqueducts, and archeological sites legally - a great deal more (and better) stuff than we got to see during our extralegal excursions. We could have seen even more if we hadn’t come during the winter, including the fascinating Fontanelle Cemetery, closed until April.

And of course we made time to take a day trip to climb Mt. Vesuvius (my first time seeing an active volcano) and explore the ruins of Pompeii as well. While there, I of course could help but engage in a tiny bit of just slightly extralegal underground exploration. One of the ancient houses had a grate in front of it. Removing this revealed a staircase that led to a small basement below. I could a quick look and headed back up - only realizing afterward that this was probably the oldest underground space I had ever been in.

(Mis)adventures in Naples

Pictures of our adventures Naples can be found here.

I loved Naples - just walking around, getting a feel for the city was enough for me. But that wasn’t what we were there for - the seven of us were on a specific mission to explore the underground.

There’s always a couple ways to go about this - the legal way, or the “extralegal” way as I like to put it. Different cities have different cultures. In Paris, for instance, the extralegal way isn’t that extra. Police have a relationship with the people that do nutty stuff. They’re content to play a cat-and-mouse game with a 100-Euro fine being the biggest stick they’ve got. In return, the cataphiles can be counted on to report anything really bad down in the underground: structural dangers, smugglers, or anything else out of the normal course of things.

New York is different. Tolerance is less. There’s a few things you really don’t want to be caught doing, and a few others that will most likely result in a night in jail. But it’s necessary - there’s no other choice. There’s simply no way people can get permission for certain things nowadays, and the relative ease of doing them extralegally makes it a risk worth taking.

Naples is different from either one of the two. I could tell this was the kind of city that wasn’t about to let a bunch of arrogant outsiders who’d just rolled into town in on its secrets. Still, we decided to see if we could have a few adventures on our own.

Jim found something first - an abandoned building with a small network of quarries below it. Heartened by the fact that there was stuff out there we could find, we made more of an effort. One night we schlepped out to the northern outskirts of the city and managed to find an entrance to a drain that we followed for a while. Later on Gabe, Ashley, and Steve popped manholes until finding a network of utility tunnels near downtown. We heard about an old abandoned industrial park from the 1960s and spent a few hours checking that out. A couple of small barriers jumped, scaffolding climbed, and “employees only” doors opened led to some OK views from the old castle downtown. Somewhat interesting, but only a scratch on the surface of what Naples has to offer.

Our experience in Naples is best summed up by our attempt to walk the ancient Roman pedestrian tunnels through the mountains. There’s two of them we knew of - the first by Virgil’s Tomb, the second a bit further West by the coast. We scouted them out during the day, and saw a pretty climbable iron fence surrounding the entrance to the grotto. Jim, Steve, and I waited for nightfall to make our attempt on the first grotto. We got over unseen, only to encounter another fence about 100 feet into the mile+ long tunnel. This one wasn’t remotely climbable - it stretched about 50 feet to very top of tunnel, completely barring any and all access. We hopped back over the first fence and decided to try the other grotto. This time, the entrance wasn’t so obvious. We wound through the hills of what seemed to be a very rich, residential part of town - the kind of part of town where you definitely don’t want to be caught accidentally wandering into someone’s backyard instead of an old Roman tunnel. Still, we eventually found what we thought was the entrance. Over the fence we went - with the same result as the first tunnel: a ceiling-to-floor gate making it impossible to continue.

The extralegal way wasn’t a complete bust, but it was close. In quite a new development for our motley crew of international urban adventurers, the straight and narrow would turn out to reveal more of the city. But of course, it wasn’t quite as much fun.

Napoli York

Pictures of our adventures Naples can be found here.

New York is a Jewish City. It’s an everyday thing. It’s in the shrug the Korean grocer gives you, the casual colloquialisms of the Haitian cab driver, the joking comment made by the Dominican guy that you ask for directions on 9th Avenue. For someone who grew up in a Jewish household, fitting in in New York is the easiest, most comfortable thing in the world. Who you are is in the air, in the streets, in the fabric of the city.

It’s easy for me to feel this character, because it’s the character I know intimately. But the Jewish character of New York is only one part of it. Numerous immigrants from every corner of the globe have made New York home, and each has contributed something indelible to its landscape. Few of these groups have come in greater numbers, or been there longer, or contributed more to the cultural landscape than the Jews of Eastern Europe. But one that has are the Southern Italians. And one of the main sources of this Southern Italian immigration has been the city of Naples.

When I went to Naples, I wondered how much of the character of the city I see everyday in New York and just don’t notice. I wondered how much of this character I would be able to recognize in Naples, not having grown up in an Italian-American household, and being only moderately familiar with the culture.

The easiest part, of course, was the food. Naples is known as having the best food in Italy. In fact, pretty much everything that is generally thought of a “Italian Food” in the United States is specifically Neopolitan food (I mean, they sure aren’t talking about the slow-roasted offal that’s a staple of Roman food). For starters, Naples is the home of Pizza. Gennaro Lombardi brought the stuff from Naples to Little Italy back in the early 20th century, establishing Lombardi’s Pizzeria, still on the corner of Spring and Mott street over 100 years later.

Little Italy, of course, should in reality be called Little Naples. The area of Lower Manhattan centered on Mulberry Street was a specific Neopolitan neighborhood. This is probably why, out of all of the Italian areas of Manhattan, Mulberry Street survived as the Italian restaurant row called “Little Italy” - it had by far the best food. You can still see evidence of this Neopolitan heritage today every September during the Festival of St. Gennaro - the patron Saint of Naples. They have three festivals to the guy in Naples every year, two where his blood is said to miraculously congeal. Personally, I can think of better miracles, but I guess it’s something.

But there’s more than the food and the festival of course. I could see shadows of New York in the faces of the old men, in the gestures and body language of the citizens, and especially in the way people talked with their hands. Naples has almost an entire language based on hand gestures. I was told it comes from the hilly terrain. People couldn’t simply walk down the block to see a neighbor. Combine that with the inevitable noise that comes from a densely populated city, and sign language shorthand becomes the best and most efficient way to communicate with your neighbors across the valley.

I could also see New York in the flow of the city (I wonder how much the jaywalking culture in New York comes from Naples), and in the general atmosphere. I can’t know for sure, but I suspect the Lower Manhattan of 50 years ago bore a startling resemblance to the Naples of today.

I wonder how much is there that I missed. I suspect a lot. But I can see the soul of Naples in New York. I may not know the specifics, I may not be able to articulate the similarities with any eloquence, but as sure as I can tell you New York is a Jewish city, I can tell you that it’s there.

Sottosuolo

Pictures of our adventures Naples can be found here.

I met up with 6 other people upon my arrival in Naples. Two Australians from the Cave Clan, two folks from Minnesota, one from Iowa, and my friend Steve, who accompanied my on my last trip to the Catacombs of Paris. Our purpose in Naples was to explore the Sottosuolo - the vast Underground of Naples. I had come a day late. The rest of the group had already accompanied Fulvio and Luca from Napoli Sotterranea on a trip. What they had experienced was an expedition through the ruins of one of the ancient aqueduct system underneath the city - pictures can be found here.

Naples has one of the most extensive, varied, and interesting undergrounds in the world. The city is a port, surrounded by hills. Because of the proximity of Mt. Vesuvius, the ground is Tufa - a soft, light, volcanic rock that is easily mined. The hills surrounding the old port of Naples are riddled with these huge ancient quarries. Sometimes hundreds of feet high, today they’re used by nearby businesses as storage, parking garages, you name it. In ancient times these quarries were sometimes built or used for other purposes - Roman-era tunnels through the hills used as pedestrian and carriage shortcuts, temples and tombs, catacombs and cemeteries.

Also, as with most ancient Mediterranean cities, much of it is built on the ruins of what came before. Any digging is going to unearth the remnants of the previous settlements underneath it. There’s a little exhibition off the main subway station of various archeological treasures they dug up while digging the subway tunnels. You could even see it in action. A few subway stations were being constructed using the cut-and-cover method. About 10 feet down was the ancient brickwork. The archeologists get a week or so to excavate and catalogue, and then construction moves on.

Add to this all the modern underground networks - steam tunnels, subways, sewers and storm drains. And topping it all off are two separate abandoned aqueduct systems, one dating back from Greek times. During World War II, much of the ancient aqueduct systems had been converted into makeshift air raid shelters. During the huge post-war building boom, rubble from construction and excavation has filled in much of the underground network. It’s only recently that efforts to excavate and document the underground of Naples have been seriously undertaken.

It was this that enabled the rest of the group to go on their expedition. The head of this effort is colloquially known as “The Pope,” and the Pope had let Luca and Fulvio have pretty much free reign with the group. I arrived the next day, disappointed that I had missed the initial expedition. The other underground network I had visited extensively, Paris’s, had been documented and stabilized in the late 18th century. Seeing that process in action in another city was a rare chance that I had missed.

Still, I had a week left in Naples. We knew there was a lot to find. But as we were to find out, Naples is not a city that gives up its secrets to outsiders easily.

Naples

Pictures of our adventures Naples can be found here.

There are few feelings in life like waking up early, drinking a cup of coffee, going downstairs, and having an entirely new City at your feet. And Naples is just that - a City. Capital C.

Naples is loud, chaotic, and incredibly densely populated. Vespa scooters are the preferred mode of transportation through the narrow streets of the city center, sometimes carrying an entire family - and sometimes driven by children who look barely out of diapers. Add to this cars, trucks, and of course people. A lot of people. Stop signs are taken as loose suggestions at best, and I think I saw a total of one traffic light. Yet despite all of this, I never felt the least bit unsafe walking anywhere in the city.

Naples has an amazing amount of flow. The chaos isn’t chaos at all, not once you figure out a few things. You can walk out into the middle of traffic blindfolded in the center of town and you’ll be fine. Cars will slow down, the scooters will swerve around you, nobody will even honk at you. Eye contact isn’t necessary - the drivers know you’re there and always have one foot on the brake. Holding your hand straight down with your palm flat and facing the ground is sometimes used to mean “don’t run me over,” but even that is mostly a formality. But you’ve got to keep moving. No hesitating for a small break in traffic, or taking a tentative step out into the street - it breaks the flow of the city.

The best thing about this flow is that there’s no anger involved. Honking is used to say “you might not be able to see me, but I’m here,” not “screw you buddy!” or “hurry up asshole!” If you walk out in front of a car and the guy has to slow down, that’s just the normal flow of things. Nothing to get upset about, not a personal insult, nothing to think about past the moment. Traffic is worse, but there’s no road rage. There isn’t the pent-up anger you find a lot of places in the United States that sometimes comes out in mundane things like driving. And there isn’t that sense of testosterone-fueled competition and defensiveness simmering on the streets and lingering below the surface of every mundane social encounter. Which I think is why, despite several people telling me Naples was a dangerous city, I felt much more at ease than in other, supposedly “safe” cities back in the United States.

One of my first encounters in Naples was on the subway. I was sitting in the right hand seat of a four-seat bench. The doors opened, and a father and son, who looked about 7 or 8 years old got on. The father sat on the left side, and the son in the middle. Without a trace of self-consciousness, and despite not being crowded, the kid learned his head against my shoulder and put his elbow on my leg. The father (I think because he noticed I was reading a book in English) eventually apologized and pulled the kid over to him, giving him a big hug and holding his hand the rest of the trip.

That scene is perfectly normal in Italy. And, to a large extent, I think it explains that lack of macho territorial energy that is so prevalent in countries with an Anglo-Saxon heritage. I have no way of proving it, but it seems to make sense to me that kids that grow up hugging their dads are generally much more chill. Naples is crowded, chaotic, energetic, and might be dangerous (although I didn’t experience it). But it’s not mean.

Another thing that breaks the flow, that took me a few days to figure out, is passing people on the street. In New York, and most of the United States I think, the instinctual reaction when walking down the street and coming up to someone walking the opposite way is to veer to the right to avoid them. After a couple of days of doing a lot of the “pedestrian tango” (you know, veer to the right…jerk to the left…stop…step to the left…jerk to the right…fall over your feet…manage to pass each other), I figured out what I was doing wrong. The natural instinct in Naples when coming upon that situation is to veer to the left, not the right. It’s not instinctual to us (traffic flows on the right hand side of the street in Naples also after all), but that realization was key to feeling at home navigating the Neopolitan streetscape.