Sunday, March 28, 2004
The clocks have gone forward and it’s officially summer. The Neapolitans eschew New Year’s Resolutions and instead start their diets when the clocks change. It gives them two months to get into shape before they will be strutting along the beach in the tiniest swimwear available. I, on the other hand, celebrate the longer evenings by buying a large icecream and filling my face with cassata. Prices in the local shop have gone up another 20 cents since Xmas, 13% increase, and yet Berlusconi tells us there is no inflation to speak of.
Last summer I mistakenly got off a ferry at Pozzuoli. It seemed a dreary place and I spent my twenty minutes there trying to find a train to take me back to Naples. Today, however, I awoke and decided I should give it another try. It was a favourite spot of the Greeks and Romans, and they have left ample traces of their favouritism, the largest and most imposing being the Flavian amphitheatre which is but a hop and skip from the train station. It is, so the signs tell, the 3rd largest amphitheatre in Italy, and considering it is in the amongst the shops and houses of Pozzuoli it hasn’t fared too badly over the years. Admittedly the height is not what it was, but that isn’t the main attraction here. Below the floor, all the tunnels are still intact, and it’s a fascinating way to spend half an hour. It’s very easy to imagine the slaves, animals and gladiators being herded down the narrow pathways and cooped up in their cages before being let loose on the paying public.
I shared my thirty minutes with a coachload of French schoolchildren, and found myself imagining how they would be dismembered by wild animals if only any were to hand. One of my students, ( she’s a numismatist who wants to speak English as ‘it is speaked’), works at the big museum and told me that without a shadow of doubt, French children are the worst behaved, naughty and thoroughly unpleasant beings to have in the hallowed portals of the archaeogical museum. It seems they are wont to clamber on anything that has a ‘Do Not Clamber’ sign, run around precious objects at high velocity, totally ignore any helpful guides and generally behave as they are practicing for a student demonstration when they get to college.
Having watched the little buggers climb all over the ancient ruins, dive under the ‘do not enter’ signs and try and dislodge Roman bricks to take home, I was inclined to agree with her.
Fortunately the French were not at the Solfatara, a kilometer up the hill. A volcano that isn’t extinct, but which has numerous vents chucking vast amount of sulphurous smoke into the crater is what the Solfatara is. What’s more, for the payment of a couple of quid you can walk across the warm ash and inhale the toxic fumes. In fact most people in Pozzuoli can do the latter, as the place stinks and you know you are getting near to the entrance when the smell of bad eggs takes over from jasmine and wisteria.
Here there were Germans. A happy nuclear family sitting atop a fumarole, getting warm bums and lung cancer. In the olden days, it was considered highly efficacious of inhale the sulphuric gases. There’s even a little Victorian ‘sauna’ wherein people would sit for a minute or so, sweating and trying to breathe. The German wife tried it, sweated inside her cagoule, breathed and hit her head on the roof very hard as she came out. So not that efficacious then, unless concussion was part of her prescription.
As patches of free ground are not easy to come by in Naples, they have to take them where they can find them. For this reason half of the crater, away from the steaming vents, has been given over to a campsite. It’s 3 stars, and is therefore quite posh, there is a sign on the entrance, telling car drivers and anyone other likely offender ‘DO NOT HORN’. I wouldn’t dare. After 8.30 in the evening it is absolutely forbidden to walk across the hot mud, instead, you lie in your tent hoping that the wind doesn’t change direction and you won’t be asphyxiated in the night.
Down in the port area of Pozzuoli there is a little village like enclave which is returning to life after having been restored. The effects of Bradyism, which is not anything to do with the Brady Bunch unfortunately, but rather is the rise and fall of the land over a long period, mean that the old city is now under the water. The cliff atop of which sits the most ancient part of Pozzuoli was evacuated years ago as it was slowly sliding downwards. It is just in the process of reopening after a hugely lengthy restoration, and I might well venture in one day, when it's open.
Last summer I mistakenly got off a ferry at Pozzuoli. It seemed a dreary place and I spent my twenty minutes there trying to find a train to take me back to Naples. Today, however, I awoke and decided I should give it another try. It was a favourite spot of the Greeks and Romans, and they have left ample traces of their favouritism, the largest and most imposing being the Flavian amphitheatre which is but a hop and skip from the train station. It is, so the signs tell, the 3rd largest amphitheatre in Italy, and considering it is in the amongst the shops and houses of Pozzuoli it hasn’t fared too badly over the years. Admittedly the height is not what it was, but that isn’t the main attraction here. Below the floor, all the tunnels are still intact, and it’s a fascinating way to spend half an hour. It’s very easy to imagine the slaves, animals and gladiators being herded down the narrow pathways and cooped up in their cages before being let loose on the paying public.
I shared my thirty minutes with a coachload of French schoolchildren, and found myself imagining how they would be dismembered by wild animals if only any were to hand. One of my students, ( she’s a numismatist who wants to speak English as ‘it is speaked’), works at the big museum and told me that without a shadow of doubt, French children are the worst behaved, naughty and thoroughly unpleasant beings to have in the hallowed portals of the archaeogical museum. It seems they are wont to clamber on anything that has a ‘Do Not Clamber’ sign, run around precious objects at high velocity, totally ignore any helpful guides and generally behave as they are practicing for a student demonstration when they get to college.
Having watched the little buggers climb all over the ancient ruins, dive under the ‘do not enter’ signs and try and dislodge Roman bricks to take home, I was inclined to agree with her.
Fortunately the French were not at the Solfatara, a kilometer up the hill. A volcano that isn’t extinct, but which has numerous vents chucking vast amount of sulphurous smoke into the crater is what the Solfatara is. What’s more, for the payment of a couple of quid you can walk across the warm ash and inhale the toxic fumes. In fact most people in Pozzuoli can do the latter, as the place stinks and you know you are getting near to the entrance when the smell of bad eggs takes over from jasmine and wisteria.
Here there were Germans. A happy nuclear family sitting atop a fumarole, getting warm bums and lung cancer. In the olden days, it was considered highly efficacious of inhale the sulphuric gases. There’s even a little Victorian ‘sauna’ wherein people would sit for a minute or so, sweating and trying to breathe. The German wife tried it, sweated inside her cagoule, breathed and hit her head on the roof very hard as she came out. So not that efficacious then, unless concussion was part of her prescription.
As patches of free ground are not easy to come by in Naples, they have to take them where they can find them. For this reason half of the crater, away from the steaming vents, has been given over to a campsite. It’s 3 stars, and is therefore quite posh, there is a sign on the entrance, telling car drivers and anyone other likely offender ‘DO NOT HORN’. I wouldn’t dare. After 8.30 in the evening it is absolutely forbidden to walk across the hot mud, instead, you lie in your tent hoping that the wind doesn’t change direction and you won’t be asphyxiated in the night.
Down in the port area of Pozzuoli there is a little village like enclave which is returning to life after having been restored. The effects of Bradyism, which is not anything to do with the Brady Bunch unfortunately, but rather is the rise and fall of the land over a long period, mean that the old city is now under the water. The cliff atop of which sits the most ancient part of Pozzuoli was evacuated years ago as it was slowly sliding downwards. It is just in the process of reopening after a hugely lengthy restoration, and I might well venture in one day, when it's open.
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