italy

Napoli may lack the grandeur of Roma or the style of Milano but Italy’s third largest city has its own seductive character – lively, passionate, earthy. This ancient southern capital is flanked by hills to the east and the Bay of Napoli to the west. Its streets bring to life the imagined sterotypical traffic chaos of Italy with cars and scooters veering in all directions, dodging pedestrians, honking horns, conversing with passengers, passers-by, or people on the phone, parking just about anywhere there is space. Piazzas flow into alleys; bars and restaurants spill onto sidewalks; handicraft stalls line streets in the old town and illegal vendors lay out their counterfeit wares on the high streets. Graffiti defaces just about every surface on the inner-city streets and garbage sits piled up around public bins. The city’s historic sites are modest by Italian standards yet beauty can be found: along the seaside, particularly in the leafy Posillipo region to the north of the city; inside the city’s churches and museums; and surprisingly in its metro stations, justifiably advertised as among the most beautiful in the world. Then there’s the beauty of the city’s cuisine, which is up there with the best of them. For the Napolitani, perhaps most beautiful of all is the local football club, SSC Napoli, winning this year’s Seria A football championship after a wait of thirty-three years. Months later, the city still seems to be celebrating, with streets and balconies everywhere adorned with flags and ribbons in the team’s colors, and the city’s adopted son, Diego Maradona, who led the Napoli team to their first two Serie A wins, is in iconography everywhere from street art and souvenir trinkets to the stadium named in his honor.