Observing, watching and listening to Naples. Marginal observations on the dialectic relation between the city and its port.

Abstract

I got to know Naples, its sea and landscape through the most classic of its postcards: the thick leafage of a huge cluster-pine foreground, the regular echelon formation of the nineteenth-century buildings organizing the second scene, the outline of the most ancient historical buildings – which slipped harmoniously towards the sea, through San Martino-Sant’Elmo hill, until Megaride-Castel dell’Ovo islet – as a third scene, with Vesuvio volcanic formation behind (not smoking now).
The other side of Naples, behind the historic port, did not offer a beautiful image of itself, afflicted with huge marks of war devastation and with deterioration of the environment, particularly within East areas, seat of shanties built on the rubble of bombardments, as spontaneous forms of settlement which in the following decades would have led to the unauthorized building “out of necessity”.
It was not (and it is not) usual to portray the ugly, the degraded, the anguished of Naples; we had to depict only the side able to make a fine showing. The theatrical, played, sung and represented aspects of Naples give its port another meaning: a primary place of convergence of migrant flows, of departures more than arrivals, a place of expectations, hopes, intentions, perspectives, anxiety, stimulus, plans and promises that time will concentrate in the world of memories.