Naples: City of History

As the ferry from Palermo approached Naples the city lights called through the pre-dawn atmosphere like the siren Parthenope singing her magnetic song to Ulysses. Parthenope became so distraught when she was unsuccessful in seducing Ulysses, (a monumental failure for a siren) that she flung herself into the sea and her body washed ashore in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. Her name was given to the settlement at that site, and later the settlement became Neopolis, then Napoli.

This city that had once been the largest and grandest in Europe now has a gritty external appearance in places...


yet the elegance is all around. I understand that the interiors of some of the gritty buildings are quite nice, but the tax laws and city rules make it advantageous for the property owners to leave the exteriors as they are...so the apartments inside are like little jewels encased in a rough hewn wooden box for protection.

The vibrant fabric that is the modern Naples reflects the mingling of the grit and elegance...a fusion created by the richness and diversity of her long history.

• STROPHE α. I.
• Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest
• Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven!
• Elysian City which to calm enchantest
• The mutinous air and sea: they round thee, even
• As sleep round Love, are driven!
• Metropolis of a ruined Paradise
• Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained!
• Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,
• Which armed Victory offers up unstained
• To Love, the flower-enchained!
• Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
• Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
• If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,
• Hail, hail, all hail!
• ...Percy Bysshe Shelley

We stopped for breakfast at a lovely hotel, then rode around the city briefly to look at some of the historic buildings.

As we rode around the Gulf of Naples to get to Pompeii and Sorrento, we could see the city basking in the shadow of her volcano.