Southern Italy Study Tour: Napoli

Today was our last train ride home to Rome for the semester. The next time I travel away from Rome will more than likely be at the end of the month, and I will not be returning anytime soon. Three weeks into the semester felt like forever. The three weeks that are left seem so short.

We began our Southern Italy Study Tour in Naples. People had always told me that Naples was a dirty city, so I really was not expecting much when we got there. It actually reminded me of Rome, because it has a definite city (and less coastal) feeling, which is probably why everyone I had talked to found it dirty and unpleasant.

Napoli Spanish Quarter

We spent a lot of our Southern Italy trip looking more at urban design strategies (city scale) than individual buildings. In Naples, we compared the narrow, dense, very lived-in streets of the Spanish Quarter with the wider, pristine, covered streets of the Galleria Umberto. We sketched and looked at how the architecture and planning of these two completely different spaces affected social interactions and the general atmosphere of each area.

Galleria Umberto

When we were finished sketching in the Galleria Umberto, we regrouped at the intersection of the two streets to take a group photo. As the 20 of us all stood on evenly spaced floor tiles to form the base of the dome we were standing under, some other tourists noticed what we were doing and did the same. They had the most confused, "What the heck are we doing?" looks on their faces as they followed suit and stretched their arms out with us. It was mob mentality at its finest.

On the left are two of the tourists who helped us complete our circle
(Photo by Stephanie Cervantes)

We spent the rest of the day exploring other sights in Naples. We saw Castel Nuovo (a castle right by the bay), a couple of piazze, and the Duomo of Naples. We also looked at some Fascist architecture, which we had already seen some examples of in Rome.

Poste e Telegrafi Building (Fascist)

After our architectural tour, we went to the Museo Nazionale, an archeological museum. There was an exhibit there full of Roman sculptures from Palazzo Farnese, a site that is pretty familiar to us since it is right near our studio building in Rome. There were also exhibits featuring mosaics, pottery, and frescoes from Pompei and Herculaneum. There was one particular fresco that looked so familiar to me, and, at the time, I couldn't figure out why. I realized later that the portrait is in a poster that hangs above my bed in our apartment in Trastevere, and it was also featured in at least one of my high school Latin textbooks.

Frescoed portrait from Pompei in Museo Nazionale

As soon as we arrived in Naples, it was clear that Southern Italy had a different culture from Rome or Northern Italy. Compared to the northern cities, less Italians spoke fluent English in the south. They also spoke in a distinctly Southern dialect of Italian (or maybe it was just an accent; in any case, it took some getting used to). The people generally seemed to be more easygoing and relaxed in Southern Italy.

View of Mount Vesuvius from the roof of our hotel

Even the panini and pizze were different. Panini in the North are usually served on thinner slices of bread and pressed. The panini we had in the South were served on thick rolls (which reminded me fondly of Amoroso's rolls). Likewise, Northern Italian pizza has a very thin, often charred, crust, but the pizza in Southern Italy has a thick, chewy and delicious crust. On our first night, we actually had the opportunity to sample some at the place where the Pizza Margherita was supposedly invented. It was so good.