212. Tale of Two Cities

2025 will mark the year that I fell in love … with Rome. I tried to count how many times I’d been, and came up with fourteen since 1965, when I spent a week there with my parents. There have probably been more.

There have been several trips in the winter, when it’s drizzly and cold. I have been in the summer, when the streets are clogged with Americans bellyaching that the Cokes are lukewarm, the air conditioning is weak, and the ice is nonexistent. In their defense, it’s 110 degrees. I went so far as to vow I would never come again.

But May was lovely this year, with clear blue skies and moderate temperatures. We had a great apartment in a lovely residential neighborhood, right next to the Mercato Trionfale. Practically the only English I heard was from Italians trying to be helpful by speaking it to us.

We had a lovely Rome moment of seeing Francis Ford Coppola (I think) with his granddaughter (I think) come into the famous restaurant Roscioli, where we were having dinner, and try to get a table. Sorry, Francis: no reservation, no table. A shame for him, but it’s great being in a city where arguably the world’s greatest living director might just come ambling by.

And of course, we had the great good fortune of being there at a special time with the selection of the new Pope, an event that will be recorded in a history going back nearly 2000 years.

But even without that, you can’t help being aware of the millennia of history on display everywhere, from the Colosseum to the Forum to the neighborhood churches cram-packed with masterpieces, juxtaposed with the energy and vibrancy of modernity. Plus everything and everyone looks good, too. Elegant, classy, beautiful.

Then make your way to Termini station, and hop on the train — high speed, comfortable, clean and on-time. An hour later, you’re in Naples.

You come out of the station, and Wow, wow, wow! You are hit by a wave of energy and chaos. A very different scene from Rome, but wonderful in its own way.

People, sights, noise, smells — heading off in all directions. You make your way down a street lined by slightly crumbly buildings covered by graffiti, vendors selling sunglasses and Napoli hats, and pizza, pizza, pizza. They invented it, after all. And at every last one of these little corner lunch counters, no matter how humble, you can get pizza better than any you would find in the US, anywhere.

The streets are filled with cars and people going every which way. Ben wondered if anyone actually had a job, there were so many people out and about, on a Tuesday morning. The vibrancy, the energy: so exciting!

There was one odd thing about Naples. If you didn’t know better, you would think that Diego Maradona, the Argentine soccer player who played for Napoli from 1984 to 1992 and brought them two Serie A championships, was the patron saint of Napoli. There are images of him everywhere, even though more than 30 years have passed since he had any formal association with the city. Maradona flags, figurines, bobbleheads, socks: if they could slap his image on something and put it up for sale, they did.

No matter that he left Napoli after suspension for cocaine use and rumors of ties to organized crime; after his death in 2020, they named the stadium Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.

There was a nice confluence between Rome and Naples during our visit. We had bought tickets to the big Caravaggio 2025 show at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, and planned our schedule in Italy around being there for that special event. It turned out, though, that we had mistakenly bought tickets to enter the museum, but not the special show, which was now sold out. (I am convinced there was something misleading or glitchy in their website, as there were several other Americans in the same boat, and we are pretty experienced buying tickets for events overseas.) So we decided to create our own Caravaggio show, and we went around Rome, seeking out all the Caravaggios in the three churches where you can see them for free, and arguably, where they were meant to be viewed. In Naples, there is one, “The Seven Works of Mercy” in Pio Monte della Misericordia, and we made it our business to get there, which was well worth it the effort.

But even more exciting, to me than the art itself was something else I saw: five young women art restorers whacking away at the floor tiles, presumably to replace or reset them. I got that “Ping! I could do that!” feeling. As soon as I get home, and I’m going to see if it would be possible to volunteer in some very low-skill way. I think I have reasonably good tile-whacking abilities. Wouldn’t that be the greatest?