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Remembrance of Things
Past
My dear mother-in-law (requiescat
in pace) was born in 1905. She lived through two
world wars, heard the first radio broadcasts and lived
to see TV transmissions sent back from the orbit of
Jupiter. For her, the good old days were presumably the
early 1930s; she was a young woman, the Great War was
long over, and cool minds would surely prevail to
prevent those things from ever happening again. Even earlier: I am reading Napoli Scomparsa (The Naples that has
Vanished) by Adolfo
Narciso. It was published in 1928. The author
was a well-known Neapolitan journalist born in 1877 in
the heart of the historic center of Naples. As a lad, he
was a postal messenger, a failed actor and once at the
age of 14 appeared on the stage of the Caffè
dei Mannesi in Naples with another youngster, this
one by the name of Enrico
Caruso. Narciso gave
up the stage and went into journalism and did all right
for himself. He died in 1948. He, too, like my
mother-in-law lived through two world wars and saw a lot
of history and saw his Naples undergo a lot of changes.
Yet, even then, the Naples that he
knew as a boy was changing and this is the source of his
Napoli Scomparsa. He doesn't regret the
changes that produced a new university, wide streets,
modern sanitation, but yet…the neighborhoods he wandered
as a boy were gone. Many of the changes were in fact
dictated by the Risanamento: old
buildings torn down, historic churches cut in half to
make room for straight roads; old Spanish fountains
dismantled; public beaches paved into ports—old haunts
simply gone. The heart of the city was a street
named via del Porto, described as "…where Corso Umberto now runs,
starting at Piazza della Borsa and running to the market
at the port". He tells of sitting in the old
"Caffè del Commercio" there and listening to a
young man play the piano. Another brush with greatness.
The young man turned out to be Pietro Mascagni, the
composer of Cavalleria Rusticana. His Caffè dei
Mannesi? ("Mannesi" were the medieval cartwrights
who had workshops in the area.) Yes, I went to the
location he dictates: "…the ancient via
S. Biago del librai on the corner of via
Duomo…" today to check. There was no café.
(I knew there wouldn't be, but I was still
disappointed.) I walked into the shop on the corner and
asked. "Is this where the historic Caffè dei Mannesi used to be?" "How long ago do you mean?" said she. "About a century. You know—the 'good old days'." "They weren't good for me," she
smiled. "I wasn't born yet."
When one speaks of urban renewal in
Naples, the focus is naturally on the Risanamento.
That period ended officially in 1915 upon Italy's entry
into WWI. Yet, there was another period of urban renewal
in the city after Napoli Scomparsa was
published (and well before the forced rebuilding in the
wake of WWII). That was the Fascist renewal of the 1920s
and 30. Large sections of the city show the effect of
that: the passenger terminal at the port, the new post
office, and other huge bits of totalitarian
architecture meant to be imposing. At the time that Narciso published
his book, he could still wander down to a quaint area by
the port, a small secondary port called the porticciuolo. He could have a coffee and
reminisce about being on the same stage as Caruso once
upon a time. The little port had historic importance and
was the site of the old Portosalvo
church at water's edge and the old custom's
station. The Risanamento had left it
intact, bridging it with a new port road but leaving
space beneath the bridge for water exchange. Mussolini's
megabuilders, however, in their drive to expand the
docks, filled in this quaint but useless speck of water
in the 1930s and cut off that section of town from the
water forever. I passed by a building now known as the
Zanzur Barracks (so-called for the locale in Libya from
which an Italian military unit took its name after the
Italian invasion of Libya in the early 1900s). Although
the building has not moved, it is now about two blocks
from the port, whereas it used to be at water's edge. I
almost walked by the historical marker, but I stopped
and read. I was at the entrance to a much made-over
building and "…all that is
left of the largest of three naval dockyards from the
time of the Anjou reign, built from 1305 on…" The 14th century. Now those were the good old days. |
To him, the good old days were the turn of
the century, when he was young and full of energy. The
Great War was not even on the horizon; his nation of
Italy was new and vibrant. His city was in the midst of
a great burst of urban renewal, the 
The Caffè dei Mannesi must have at
least survived the construction of via Duomo in 1880 for
Narciso to speak of it as being on the corner; yet, many
buildings in that area—known as Pendino—were simply
cleared away. This was Narciso's neighborhood, and he
has a touching story. He was a young boy when the
devastating cholera epidemics hit the city in the 1880s.
He remembers people simply dying in the streets. Other
sources put the toll at a staggering 7,000 per week (!)
for a while. He speaks very kindly of the politicians
who put their lives at risk to mingle with the
people—including not only the prime minister of Italy, but the king, himself(!)—Umberto I
(photo, left), still referred to in Italy today as il Re buono, the Good King. Narciso's
mother lay dying from cholera and the author recalls how
he ran up to the king on the street to plead for
medicine. The monarch stopped, had an aide jot down the
address, and within hours someone showed up at the home
with medicine. It was, as it turned out, too late, but
Narciso never forgot the episode: the king
had not forgotten them.