This dead city longs to be living

 

We spent most of the day yesterday at the Archaeology Museum, colloquially known as the MANN (Museo Archaelogico Nazionale di Napoli). We chose not to make the trip to Pompeii because it’s jam packed with tourists in the sweltering heat, which is what we’ve been astutely avoiding since day 3 of this trip. And man, the MANN was jam packed with artifacts from Pompeii. It also has one of the largest collections of Egyptian artifacts in the world. Oh, and a weird sex room to see what acts the Romans were comfortable painting on their walls. Much of it was tame, some of it was shockingly nasty. I don’t want to spend much time thinking about what they were too embarrassed to paint on the wall.

 

We also went to the Catacombs of San Gaudioso to see the twisted funeral practices of the Dominican friars. From our time in Rome, we were already familiar with the idea of Christians burying their dead outside the city in underground catacombs, but the surprise in Naples was the fact that the friars squeezed the dead bodies of all liquids (which is probably very similar to what is done to get milk out of almonds). Then the wealthy few pay extra to get their heads cut off and put on display.

 

This morning, Daniel took us out to see the central business district of Naples, which was first envisioned in the 1960s but started construction in the 1980s. It’s now a strange dystopian wasteland of high rise buildings, broken escalators, garbage and stray mattresses. We did go on a weekend, but it’s hard to imagine this place ever being a thriving downtown. There’s a new Metro station under construction that looks incredible, maybe that will help them finally realize their dreams.

 

Is it any wonder

There’s squalor in the sun?

With their broken schemes and their lotteries

They never get nowhere

-        Patty Smith, Dead City

Ancient fishing technique?

If I hung out with a beak this big, I’d wear pants

If you look close, I think he’s wearing a Yankees hat

It’s a mummay!

Incredible every day wall art from well before the Renaissance

San Gaudioso starts innocent enough but you can tell something sinister may lie beneath

After squeezing the juice, everything left gets jammed into boxes until full 

By paying a bit more, your drained head can live on as a greeter (at least for a while)

Looks great, but where is everyone?

A bit pessimistic, maybe they haven’t seen the new metro station yet

All the stairs looked like this, stay above ground

One of the best empty towers I’ve ever seen

There were definitely more weeds than people while we were there

This has potential to become the most beautiful metro station in Europe

Naples Toledo station currently holds the title as most beautiful in Europe