Who is Online

We have 192 guests and no members online

Naples

We both had rather negative memories of Naples from the 1970's.  But it was like a different city.  Now Naples seems to be thriving there is no evidence of the crime wave that once brought the city down.  Indeed there are tourist friendly police everywhere.  The people are friendly, no longer distant and suspicious. The city is clean and interesting.

After returning from Pompeii we spent several hours in the National Archaeological Museum (Museo Archeologico Nazionale) in Naples, viewing original items, mosaics and murals, many from Pompeii,  although not everything was on display. 

Among those that are is a large collection of erotic art from Pompeii and Herculaneum some of it from private homes.  It's not clear if this preoccupation with sex was limited to the resort towns or not - like the British seaside love of 'dirty postcards'.  No other Roman towns from before the advent of Christianity remain in tact.

 

/>

A fraction of the non-erotic collection

 

Everyday images decorating walls in homes like sculptures in public places frequently illustrated some myth and the characters semi-nude.  But nudity is represented in many homes and art galleries today.  It doesn't mean that we all run around naked nor do I imagine did they.  The unusual difference is that we usually keep what we might term pornography in a bottom draw, whereas they seemed to be happy to display it.

Thus, modesty prohibits me showing you more than a small sample of the Roman erotic images:

 

 

 

As a change from the museum we dropped in to the cathedral. It was a lonely experience.  

 

Cathedral interior - repairs are under way to prevent it falling down

 

Among the other interesting things in Naples is the underground chambers.  We took a tour of the city underground including some buried Roman ruins - a theatre at which Nero performed - now partly incorporated into Neapolitan houses. 

It is said that in order to construct the city walls a rather unique quarry was found.  Blocks of stone were cut from the rock underling the city then hoisted to the surface through shafts.  This generated a series of huge interconnected underground chambers that became cisterns for storing water against a possible siege.  The trouble was that the shafts used during construction doubled as wells and as garbage disposals.  What better place to dispose of a body?   Initially there were people charged with keeping the water clean but at some point this service failed and the garbage took over.  The stench from underground must have been appalling.

Jump forward to 1940 and Italy under Mussolini and the Fascists had declared war on Britain and invaded Egypt and Greece. In consequence Naples had come under air attack from the RAF based in Malta.  Following the German lead, allied bombing during WW2 deliberately targeted economic infrastructure including skilled workers and other key civilians, in other words: cities, as a way of bringing the enemy to its knees. 

Although it was not like Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Berlin or even Dresden, Naples would become the most bombed Italian city and suffer between 20 and 25 thousand civilian casualties, about the same as Dresden.  By 1943 there was on average a British or American air raid on the city every second day.  Air raid shelters were needed but the readymade underground chambers were full of rotting garbage.  The solution was to press it down and pour concrete over the whole mess. 

The constant raids had the desired effect.  As it became apparent that the war had turned against them, the people of Naples would turn on the Fascists and their Nazi allies and hasten the beginning of the end of the war in Europe.

 

Naples Underground

 

Today tourists can wander about in these historic underground chambers, on slightly undulating concrete floors, and not a hint of the entombed garbage remains.  Among some wartime memorabilia there are experiments growing different plants under lights and a convent's wine cellar that once occupied one of the underground chambers.  

 

Naples Above Ground

 

We left by train for Florence full of enthusiasm for Naples.

 

 

 

No comments

Travel

Turkey

 

 

 

 

In August 2019 we returned to Turkey, after fourteen years, for a more encompassing holiday in the part that's variously called Western Asia or the Middle East.  There were iconic tourist places we had not seen so with a combination of flights and a rental car we hopped about the map in this very large country. 

We began, as one does, in Istanbul. 

Read more: Turkey

Fiction, Recollections & News

The McKie Family

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

This is the story of the McKie family down a path through the gardens of the past that led to where I'm standing.  Other paths converged and merged as the McKies met and wed and bred.  Where possible I've glimpsed backwards up those paths as far as records would allow. 

The setting is Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England and my path winds through a time when the gardens there flowered with exotic blooms and their seeds and nectar changed the entire world.  This was the blossoming of the late industrial and early scientific revolution and it flowered most brilliantly in Newcastle.

I've been to trace a couple of lines of ancestry back six generations to around the turn of the 19th century. Six generations ago, around the turn of the century, lived sixty-four individuals who each contributed a little less 1.6% of their genome to me, half of them on my mother's side and half on my father's.  Yet I can't name half a dozen of them.  But I do know one was called McKie.  So, this is about his descendants; and the path they took; and some things a few of them contributed to Newcastle's fortunes; and who they met on the way.

In six generations, unless there is duplication due to copulating cousins, we all have 126 ancestors.  Over half of mine remain obscure to me but I know the majority had one thing in common, they lived in or around Newcastle upon Tyne.  Thus, they contributed to the prosperity, fertility and skill of that blossoming town during the century and a half when the garden there was at its most fecund. So, it's also a tale of one city.

My mother's family is the subject of a separate article on this website. 

 

Read more: The McKie Family

Opinions and Philosophy

The Transit of Venus

 

 

On Wednesday 6th June, 2012 in Eastern Australia and New Zealand (as well Pacific islands across to Alaska) Venus was seen to pass between the Earth and the Sun; appearing as a small circular spot crossing the sun’s disc; for around six and a half hours.

This is a very rare astronomical event that has been the cause of great change to our world.

This is not because, as the astrologers would have it, that human events are governed or predicted by the disposition of the stars or planets.  It is because the event has served to significantly advance scientific knowledge and our understanding of the Universe.

Read more: The Transit of Venus

Terms of Use

Terms of Use                                                                    Copyright