Bordeaux and Palmiers

When I visited Naples for the first time this year, I had never been to Southern Italy. I had been as far south as Rome, which, as any Southern Italian knows, is not south at all.

My father’s family comes from Sicily, which is technically not Southern Italy either, but I knew that my roots lay in this country that was so mysterious to me. I had no idea that I would feel so at home in a place that I, and even my father, had never been.

Naples is not a city that most people enjoy. It ranks up there with Marseille as a “dirty” city, a city that is not worth visiting when there are such beautiful things (Capri or Monaco) to see. I have never been to Marseille, but if it really does rank with Naples, then I know one thing for sure: I will love it.

I think people need to give Naples more time. Naples doesn’t jump out and welcome you like Paris or London or Rome. The charm in Naples lies under the grit, behind some of the daunting doors, and within the reign of the camorra*. So much of Naples’ beauty exists behind closed doors: in private courtyards or monasteries that a tourist wouldn’t think of entering. The best meals lie in simplicity: the best restaurants are not those with a view of Capri, but the tiny, family-run pizza places that make simple, homey dishes of pasta and tomatoes and the native mozzarella di bufala. Naples is not a rich city. It is not fancy, like Rome and Milan and the other northern cities. It never was.

Naples is crowded, and in this way, it reminds me of New York. The streets hardly have room for the cars, what with all the pedestrians, stray dogs, scooters and vendors setting up their booths on them. This connection with New York automatically made me think that Naples was a fast-paced city, like my old home, but in jumping to this conclusion, I was terribly wrong.

Time in Naples cannot be so easily defined. Time in Naples does not function like it does in other parts of the world. Naples exists in two times, as so much of Italy does: the present and the past. So much of Naples is in the past. Neapolitans are superstitious and religious, combining both rural folklore of curses and hexes and the traditional beliefs of the Catholic Church in their daily lives. Nowhere else have I seen the mix of traditional Western medicine and pure Christian faith so intertwined in the case of illness or death as it is in Naples.

I won’t say I’ve never met a city I didn’t like. I’m a native New Yorker, and I’m generally more forgiving of cities than most people. That said, I really did not like Chicago. Lancaster, Pennsylvania (the city, not the county) gave me the willies. I really did not like Genoa, in the north of Italy, at all. But when it comes to Naples, I’ll take it, garbage and all.

*The well-known Mafia runs Sicily (and much of New York), but further north in Naples, it is the camorra, the crime organization that is built, not upon families, but upon a well-established hierarchy. The camorra is involved in every business in Naples in some way, and is so ingrained in the commerce and life in Naples that it would be almost impossible to eradicate it.

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