Thursday June 6th was our last full day in Europe at the end of a grand three-week adventure. We had to finish the day at an opera in Naples, just 45 minutes from Sorrento on the highway, but I had two other stops in mind, so it was a busy day.
My first goal was Pomigliano d’Arco, a suburb of Naples that was home to my grandfather, his brothers and his parents before they emigrated to New York City. I had been there in 1995 and I had found the family church and some graves in the cemetery: I wanted to return now that I had much more knowledge to provide context to my discoveries.
In 1995 I had had no idea what I was doing, it was a lark, filling in a spare day while I was killing time waiting for a flight home. I'd seen a page of Sgammatos in the Naples phone book, so I took the Circumvesuviana commuter rail out to the little town and started exploring. On this trip I had a goal and I had Google Maps.
Thirty years ago, I arrived on the Feast of the Assumption, a holiday, and everything was closed. When I found the cemetery, the gate was locked and I had to "break in" by climbing a tree near the wall, then clambering over and scaling down some empty shelves that would one day be used as graves. On this visit I parked the car and walked in.
Southern Italian cemeteries are not like ours. They have 25 centuries of history here, and more dead people than places to put them.
In the top photo here you see a very typical grave: a free-standing stone structure squeezed in among others, each with five shelves. The lower photo shows a more crowded version, like apartments compared to houses. The bottom photo I think shows a high-rent district. In the standing tombs, each shelf accommodates one body and has a face plate with the identity of the interred. On both trips I never saw any dates older than 100 years previous, but on the first trip I saw a broken corner of one structure and an ossuary beneath it. I have to learn more, but my assumption is that burial costs provide 100 years of silent, solitary repose, and then your bones are dumped in the cellar and the space is made available for the next decedent.
I hope that doesn't seem morbid. Much of archaeology is built upon the study of graves. For as long as man has been a social animal we have taken great care with the dead, and this is a cultural practice that to me is both recognizable and strange, just like traveling in Italy.
We also found the church that at least some of the family attends, but on a Thursday there was nobody there except a cleaning lady and a priest, neither of whom spoke English. The priest was nice, and when I showed him my passport, he showed me to the family pew!
With all that, we agreed that Pomigliano d'Arco is not really more charming than Foggia was, and we could see why Melissa's and my grandparents did not feel bound to the old soil. It's not a tourist center, few people speak English, and in general it's less pretty and tourist friendly. So we headed west to the scene of impending doom.
An hour on the modern beltway to the north of Naples brought us to Pozzuoli, on a coastal point west of Naples that has been questionably prime real estate since Roman times. As you can see in the photo here, it's a modern city that preserves its heritage as best it can, while it can.
This area, surrounding and including Pozzuoli, is called Campi Flegrei, or the Phlegraean Fields. This neighborhood was the Macellum, or downtown market square, in Roman times; this was their marketplace and the Romans built those columns 2000 years ago. Naturally they built them on dry land. There's the mystery, the drama, and the sense of impending doom!
Those columns have on them, above the reach of a normal human, unmistakable signs of barnacles and other marine life. Through a process called Bradyseism, these few square miles have sunk below sea level and risen up again, and since my last visit to Naples it has risen 10 feet more!
This is due to magma flowing out of and into volcanic chambers beneath the surface. This area is the caldera of an ancient supervolcano, one that dwarfs Vesuvius by comparison. In this space I cannot convey the honestly earth-shaking gravity of this strange, terrifying thing! Do please see the link above, and explore it as much as you dare.
I can say this: impending doom notwithstanding, like many other people we had a lovely lunch in Pozzuoli, outdoors looking over the Bay of Naples back towards Sorrento. It was a gorgeous blue-sky day, the brutal summer heat was still a few days away, and we were about to end a fabulous vacation.
So we accepted that we could be blown to bits at any moment, but for now we needed lunch, which we got at the Ristorante Scapricciatiello , overlooking those portentous columns: Lorna had the Pezzogna (known to some (but not me) as blackspot sea bream), I had the grilled red shrimp, and Melissa enjoyed the Paccheri pasta with arugula, cherry tomatoes and flaked Parmigiana cheese. It was excellent in every way. The servers, once again, were thrilled that we (OK, I) understood the local foodways and fare, and they were quick to suggest a few locavore specialties that were not on the menu but that could be quickly created in a short time.
Then we drove 30 minutes to the Hotel Santa Brigida in Naples. This was key to the success of our endeavor, the linchpin of our final triumph: seeing the young New York stars Nadine Sierra and Michael Fabiano in a Verdi opera at the historic Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the oldest working opera house in the world!
What a disaster! There was no dedicated parking (although we'd reserved it), so while I was double-parked in Neapolitan traffic, they discovered that the rooms were on the fifth floor by American reckoning, the elevator was a coffin on a rope, our reserved parking space didn't exist, and the opera was in two hours. Booking.com helped me to find a new hotel, the Gold Millennium, near the airport. It's a no-frills place, but it was also no headaches and we made it to the show.
After the stress of the failed hotel reservation and the thought of missing this bucket-list show, I just didn't have the stomach or the skill for the drive to the Teatro through Neapolitan rush-hour traffic and parking, so we hired a professional. Lazario brought us from the airport hotel to the Galleria across from the Teatro (6 km/4 miles), in a mere 40 minutes, exclaiming all the way that the traffic in Naples is like “Bombay!” He was an entertaining fellow, but not quite charming. That's OK in a cab driver, he got us to our destination faster than Han Solo made the Kessel Run, keeping up a colorful chatter the whole way, most of which we understood.
Our supper was in a tourist trap near the opera house. The waiter was a true pro, in all the wrong ways. He was immediately our best friend, with the Inside Scoop on everything that we wanted to know, and much that we didn't, like when George Clooney dined there. We had a show to get to, and at an opera you don't get admitted after it has begun. Melissa had a salad, I had some pizza and we split a bottle of Taurasi. Lorna’s pasta arrived too late so I gave it to our neighbors, along with the rest of the Taurasi. Naples is famous for pizza, but not that gloppy mess. In a trip full of Foodie brilliance, this was not one of the better parts.
We got to the venerable Teatro di San Carlo in time. The show was Luisa Miller with Nadine Sierra and Michael Fabiano, done in oratorio style, that is, sung on stage without fancy sets and costumes. That was fine, because these are two of the finest voices of their generation. We'd been disappointed by the sets and the costumes in Otello in Vienna, and the screwy staging of Don Giovanni in Venice; ultimately it's the magic of the voices and the music that we're there for. The hall is beautiful on the inside (although somewhat grim on the outside) and the sound was excellent. We had great seats and we could see everything - our fourth opera of the vacation was a fitting way to finish it!
The drive back to the hotel by the airport was another adventure. The price of front row seats is that you're the last to get a taxi. We ended up in an enormous van piloted by Han Solo's more experienced older brother. We were the furthest out, so the last out of the van. Inside the van it was a polyglot party, with tourists and locals jabbering away in whatever language they thought someone would know, with frequent interruptions from a Spanish lady who was our universal interpreter, and her daughter who frequently offered alternative words. There were a couple of bottles of wine in the mix and there was much hilarity!
By the time we got to our hotel we were ready to end this whole long exciting incredible three-week adventure!