CASTEL DELL'OVO, THE PROMONTORY OF OLD MEGARIDE

Musings of The Grandma...

There are places that you visit once. And there are places that become part of you. For me, Castel dell'Ovo belongs firmly to the second category.

When I lived in Napoli, I used to walk down to the port almost every day. I needed the Mediterranean the way some people need music, coffee or fresh air. I would walk along the waterfront, following the sea, until the paved path carried me towards the ancient fortress standing on the small island-like promontory of Megaride.

I have been to Castel dell'Ovo many times. But one visit remains particularly vivid. It was my thirtieth birthday. Claire Fontaine came from Barcelona to visit to me and she had bought a tiny Neapolitan cake and brought some candles with her. We sat there in the late afternoon, looking towards the bay, trying to keep the candles alight while the sea breeze repeatedly blew them out. We laughed. We tried again. The candles went out again. And again. More than twenty years have passed since then. The castle is still there. The sea is still there. Napoli is still there. But we are not the same people who sat there that evening. Perhaps this is what places like Castel dell'Ovo teach us. Stone has an extraordinary memory. Human beings do not.

The first surprise about Castel dell'Ovo is that it is considerably older than its medieval appearance suggests. Much older. The fortress we see today is only the latest chapter of a story that began long before medieval Napoli existed.

The rocky promontory of Megaride occupies a remarkable position at the edge of the Bay of Napoli. It is almost impossible to imagine a better place from which to understand why this coastline has attracted human beings for thousands of years.

Before the castle, before the Roman villa, before the medieval fortress, there was the Greek world. The story of Napoli is deeply connected with the Greek settlements of Campania. The ancient city of Neapolis  -the “new city”- emerged within a landscape already shaped by earlier Greek foundations, including Parthenope.

Megaride belongs to that very early layer of the city's history. And this is why I find Castel dell'Ovo so fascinating. It is not simply a castle. It is a historical palimpsest. One civilisation built upon the traces of another. One era transformed the structures left by the previous one. Names changed. Gods changed. Languages changed. Political powers changed. But the rock remained. And the sea remained.

Then came Rome. And the story of Megaride took another extraordinary turn. The promontory became associated with the Castrum Lucullanum, the luxurious seaside complex traditionally connected with the Roman statesman Lucius Licinius Lucullus. Lucullus is remembered not only as a military commander and politician, but also for his legendary wealth and extravagant lifestyle. His villa complex in Napoli became almost synonymous with Roman luxury. Gardens. Terraces. Exotic plants. Fishponds. Banquets. Libraries. The kind of wealth that eventually gave rise to the word Lucullan -something extraordinarily luxurious or sumptuous.

It is difficult to reconcile that image with the fortress we see today. And yet this is precisely what makes Napoli so extraordinary. The same piece of land can be, at different moments, a Greek settlement, a Roman villa, a fortified site, a monastic complex and a medieval castle. Napoli does not erase its past. It builds over it.

Perhaps one of the most extraordinary chapters in the history of Megaride came at the end of the Western Roman Empire. In the fifth century, the complex was fortified. And in 476, after the young emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed, he was sent into exile in Napoli. Think about that for a moment. The same Mediterranean landscape that had witnessed Greek colonisation, Roman expansion and extraordinary imperial wealth was now witnessing the end of the Western Roman imperial tradition. One world was disappearing. Another was beginning. And Megaride was still there. Watching. A castle that wasn't always a castle Over the centuries, the site continued to change.

There was a monastic presence. There were fortifications. There were Norman transformations. The strategic importance of the promontory increased as Napoli developed into one of the great cities of the Mediterranean. Eventually, the medieval fortress that we recognise today emerged. But I think calling it simply a “medieval castle” is slightly misleading. Because when you stand there, you are standing on layer upon layer of history. Greek Napoli. Roman Napoli. Late Antiquity. Medieval Napoli. And, eventually, modern Napoli. It is almost as if the city has compressed more than two thousand years into a single rock.

Of course, no story about Castel dell'Ovo would be complete without its most famous legend. The name itself means “Castle of the Egg.” According to medieval tradition, the Roman poet Virgil -who was already surrounded by a considerable aura of magic and mystery in the medieval imagination- supposedly hid a magical egg somewhere within the castle. As long as the egg remained intact, the castle -and even Napoli itself- would remain safe. If the egg were ever broken, disaster would follow. It is an extraordinary legend. But perhaps it is also an extraordinarily Neapolitan one.

Because Napoli has always lived comfortably alongside the boundary between history and legend, faith and superstition, the sacred and the everyday. The city that venerates Saint Januarius can also turn Diego Armando Maradona into a deity. The city that celebrates its saints can be fascinated by ghosts and the souls of the dead. The city that preserves Roman ruins can tell stories about magical eggs. In Napoli, these things do not necessarily contradict one another. They simply coexist.

There is another reason Castel dell'Ovo means so much to me. Its position makes it impossible to forget the sea. And the sea is the thread that connects so many of the places I have been writing about. At Paestum, I found the Greek Mediterranean. At Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Roman Mediterranean. At Procida, Ischia, Capri and Baia, I found islands and coastlines shaped by the same sea. And here, at Castel dell'Ovo, all those layers seem to converge.

The Mediterranean was never simply a geographical boundary. It was a highway. Greek ships crossed it. Phoenician ships crossed it. Roman ships crossed it. Merchants, soldiers, migrants, artists, philosophers and travellers crossed it. Languages travelled across it. Religions travelled across it. Recipes travelled across it. Ideas travelled across it. Cultures collided, mixed and transformed one another. And Napoli was always there, facing the sea.

Perhaps this is why I love returning to Castel dell'Ovo. Every time I walk towards it, I see the same stones. But I am never the same person. When I was thirty, Claire and I sat there with our little cake and our hopeless candles, fighting against the evening breeze. We were young. We had no idea how quickly the following twenty years would disappear.

Today, when I think about that evening, the memory feels almost like an archaeological layer of my own life. The castle has survived centuries. It has survived political upheavals, wars, earthquakes, bombardments and the transformation of Napoli around it. We have not. And perhaps that is the most humbling thing about ancient places. They make us realise how brief our own existence is. Tempus fugit. Time flies. Or perhaps, more accurately, time simply moves forward while we remain for a moment in its path.

This is something I have learned repeatedly while travelling through Campania. At Paestum, the Greek temples remain standing. At Pompeii, an entire Roman city was preserved by catastrophe. At Herculaneum, streets and houses still tell us about people who lived almost two thousand years ago. At Castel dell'Ovo, different civilisations have left their traces on the same piece of land. The monuments remain. We change. Our bodies age. Our friendships evolve. People we loved disappear. Cities transform. And yet, sometimes, we can return to the same place and recover a moment that we thought had been lost.

That is what happened to me at Castel dell'Ovo. I can still see the late afternoon. I can still see the bay. I can still see that tiny cake. And I can still see the candles being extinguished by the Mediterranean breeze. For a few seconds, twenty years disappear. And I am thirty again.

Perhaps that is the real magic of Castel dell'Ovo. Not the egg. Not the legend. Not even the extraordinary history of Megaride. It is the fact that the place has witnessed so much human history while remaining stubbornly present. Greek settlers came. Romans came. Emperors disappeared. Kings came. Monks came. Armies came. Cities changed. People were born and died. And the Mediterranean continued to breathe beside the rock.

Castel dell'Ovo remains there, looking across the Bay of Naples as it has done for centuries. And every time I walk towards it, I am reminded of something both beautiful and slightly painful: the monuments endure, but our lives are only a brief visit. 

Perhaps that is why we should look. Really look. At the temples. At the castles. At the sea. At the people sitting beside us. At the friends who share the journey. At the tiny cakes. At the candles that refuse to stay alight. Because one day, those small moments will become our own archaeology. And perhaps, after we are gone, someone else will walk along the same path, look at the same stones and remember that human beings once stood there too.

Tempus fugit. The castle remains. The sea remains. And for one brief moment, we are here.

Mediterranean, as always.

More information: LBV

Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
Perhaps one day we will find joy 

 in remembering these things.

 

Virgil

PAESTUM, WHERE THE MEDITERRANEAN REMEMBERS

Musings of The Grandma...

There are places you visit. And then there are places that seem to recognise you. Paestum is one of them.

I had visited it several times before, always arriving by car. I knew the road, the landscape, the approach, and the extraordinary moment when the ancient temples began to emerge from the Mediterranean countryside. But one year, when my friend Claire Fontaine travelled with me through Campania, I decided to show her Paestum without telling her where we were going. I wanted her to discover it. We took the train and got off at Paestum station. And then, for the first time, I realised that there was a small problem. I had always arrived by car. I knew where Paestum was. I simply wasn't entirely sure how to get there from the railway station. So I did what generations of travellers had done before smartphones, GPS and Google Maps: I looked at the sun, tried to work out where the sea was, and confidently started walking.

About one or two hundred metres later, I had to confess. "I don't actually know where we are." Claire was not particularly impressed. Especially because it was very hot. We continued walking. And then, suddenly, we crossed a small pine grove. And there they were. The temples. I will never forget Claire's face. "Oh my God." It was not the reaction of someone looking at a collection of archaeological ruins. It was the reaction of someone suddenly  confronted with something extraordinarily beautiful. Something ancient. Something that had survived.

There, beneath the Campanian sun, stood the monumental Greek temples of Paestum, astonishingly preserved after more than two thousand years. And there were hardly any people around. For a moment, it felt as though we had discovered them ourselves.

Paestum was originally founded by the Greeks as Poseidonia, probably towards the end of the 7th century BC. It was part of the extraordinary Greek presence in southern Italy that we call Magna Graecia -Megálē Hellás, Greater Greece. This is one of the things that makes southern Italy so fascinating. The ancient Mediterranean was never a collection of isolated civilisations. It was a network. People travelled. They sailed. They traded. They founded cities. They carried their gods, languages, artistic traditions, architectural ideas, food and customs with them.

The Greeks reached the shores of southern Italy and Sicily and established communities that became some of the most remarkable centres of the ancient Mediterranean. Poseidonia was one of them. Later, the city came under Lucanian control and eventually became a Roman colony, receiving the name Paestum. And yet, standing there today, it is the Greek character of the place that overwhelms you.

The temples are impossible to ignore. They dominate the landscape not because they are surrounded by modern buildings or monuments, but precisely because they are not. They stand among fields, trees and Mediterranean vegetation. The landscape has not completely surrendered to the city. And perhaps that is why Paestum feels so powerful.

Paestum's three great Greek temples are among the best-preserved Doric temples anywhere in the ancient world. 

The building traditionally known as the Temple of Hera, the great temple traditionally called the Temple of Neptune, and the Temple of Athena form an extraordinary architectural ensemble. Their traditional names, however, should be treated with some caution. Archaeologists have debated the precise identities of the deities to whom the temples were dedicated, and the evidence does not always allow us to be certain. But perhaps that uncertainty makes them even more fascinating. Because what remains is not simply the name of a god. What remains is the physical expression of a civilisation. Columns. Stone. Proportion. Light. Geometry. Space. And an extraordinary understanding of how architecture can transform the relationship between human beings and the landscape.

The temples do not simply occupy the landscape. They converse with it. Claire and I spent more than three hours there. We sat beneath a large olive tree, close to one of the temples. I don't remember which one. But I remember the shade. I remember the heat. I remember the silence. And I remember looking at those stones and feeling something that is difficult to explain. It was not simply admiration for ancient architecture. It was something closer to pride. An external pride in what we were seeing. And an internal pride in what we are. Mediterranean. 

Proudly Mediterranean.

Because the Mediterranean is not merely a sea. It is a cultural space. A meeting place. A crossroads that has connected people for thousands of years. Its shores speak different languages, belong to different countries and have developed very different histories. And yet there are things that repeatedly connect them. The landscape. The light. The olive tree. The vine. The sea. The markets. The food. The architecture. The way people occupy public space. The sound of voices in the streets. The music. The relationship with death. The relationship with family. The extraordinary ability to sit around a table for hours. We may disagree about almost everything. But sometimes, beneath all those differences, there is something recognisable. Something Mediterranean.

We often look at maps and see borders. Ancient people saw routes. The sea that separates us today was also the sea that connected people yesterday. Greek ships crossed it. Phoenician ships crossed it. Roman ships crossed it. Merchants, sailors, soldiers, philosophers, migrants and travellers crossed it. Ideas crossed it. Religions crossed it. Recipes crossed it. Words crossed it. Music crossed it. Civilisations crossed it.  And they left traces of themselves on shores that today belong to completely different nations. That is why I have always found the concept of Mare Nostrum fascinating.

The Romans called the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum -"Our Sea"- after establishing control over much of its coastline. But perhaps today we should be careful with the possessive. It is not really our sea. It belongs to all the people who have lived around it. To Greeks and Italians. To Catalans and Sicilians. To Andalusians and Provençals. To Maltese and Tunisians. To Croats and Albanians. To Egyptians and Lebanese. To Turks and Cypriots. To countless peoples whose histories have been intertwined by this enormous blue space. The Mediterranean does not belong to one civilisation. It is one of the places where civilisations met. And Paestum is one of its most beautiful testimonies.

Perhaps this is why I feel that Paestum deserves to be remembered not merely as an archaeological site, but as a symbol of Hellenism. Hellenism is sometimes reduced to marble statues, philosophers and temples. But it was much more than that. It was a way of understanding the world. An extraordinary intellectual, artistic and cultural tradition that travelled far beyond mainland Greece. And southern Italy became one of its great homes.

Walking through Paestum, you realise that the Greek world was not something distant, confined to the Aegean. It was here. In Campania. On the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Under the same Mediterranean sun that shines today. And perhaps that is what makes the experience so overwhelming. You are not simply looking at the past. You are looking at one of the foundations of the cultural landscape in which we still live.

I often think about that olive tree. There was nothing particularly monumental about it. It wasn't a temple. It wasn't a column. It wasn't a piece of sculpture. It was simply an olive tree. But it gave us shade. And for three hours, Claire and I sat beneath it looking at the temples. The irony is beautiful. The temples had survived for more than two thousand years. The olive tree belonged to the living landscape. And for a few hours, we occupied the space between them. Ancient stone behind us. Living tree above us. Mediterranean light everywhere.

It felt almost like being temporarily inserted into a very long story. A story that had begun long before us and would continue long after we had left.

That first sight of Paestum was, quite simply, a cultural slap in the face. A magnificent one. And perhaps I needed it. Because there is something wonderfully humbling about standing in front of something built by people who lived more than two thousand years ago and realising that their sense of proportion, beauty and permanence can still leave us speechless. We like to think of ourselves as modern. Connected. Advanced. Unprecedented. And then we arrive at Paestum. And a column looks at us. And suddenly our sense of importance becomes slightly smaller. Not insignificant. Just... smaller. And I think that is a good thing. Ancient places can teach us humility.

I wanted Claire to see a magical place. Instead, Paestum reminded both of us that magic does not always need to be invented. Sometimes it is already there. It has simply been waiting for us. We walked there through the heat, slightly lost, following the sun and trying to find the sea. And then a small pine grove opened. And beyond it stood the temples. Thousands of years old. Silent. Beautiful. Still standing. Claire looked at them and said: "Oh my God." I understood exactly what she meant. Because sometimes there are no better words.

Paestum is not simply a place where the past has survived. It is a place where the Mediterranean still speaks. Through its stone. Through its olive trees. Through its light. Through its silence. And through the people who continue to stand beneath that sun, looking at those temples and feeling, perhaps without even knowing why, that they are looking at something that belongs to all of us. Not because we own it. But because we are part of the same sea of history. The same light. The same cultural memory. The same Mediterranean.

Proudly Mediterranean.

And, just for a moment, very small beneath those enormous stones.

More information: Paestum Velia

Πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος

Man is the measure of all things.

Protagoras

MONASTERO DI SANTA CHIARA. FAITH & DEATH IN NAPOLI

Musings of The Grandma...

There are cities where religion is something you enter through the doors of a church. And then there is Napoli. In Napoli, religion is not necessarily inside the church. It is on the walls. It is in the streets. It is in the flowers placed beneath a tiny image of a saint. It is in the candles burning beside a photograph. It is in the voices of people talking to saints as if they were old friends. It is in miracles, promises, processions, superstition, music and football. And sometimes, perhaps inevitably in Napoli, it is also in death.

In the heart of the historic centre stands the monumental complex of Santa Chiara, one of the great medieval foundations of Napoli. The complex dates from the Angevin period and became one of the city's most important religious institutions. Its history is inseparable from the history of Napoli itself, and its architecture reflects the successive layers of cultures that have shaped the city. UNESCO includes Santa Chiara among the outstanding monuments of Napoli' historic centre.

But there is something about Santa Chiara that interests me even more than its architecture. It is what the place represents. Because if you want to understand Napoli, you have to understand that faith here has never been entirely obedient.

Napoli has its saints. Plenty of them. But the relationship between the city and its saints is wonderfully peculiar. The most famous is undoubtedly Saint Januarius -San Gennaro, the patron saint of Napoli.  His blood is traditionally kept in two glass ampoules in the Chapel of the Treasury of Napoli Cathedral, and on several occasions each year the faithful gather to witness the expected liquefaction of the relic. The phenomenon has generated centuries of devotion, debate and popular fascination.

But San Gennaro is not some distant celestial bureaucrat. He belongs to Napoli. And Napoli expects things from him. In one particularly extraordinary aspect of the tradition, if the blood does not liquefy, the reaction of the faithful has historically not always been one of quiet resignation. They can complain. They can scold him. They can even insult him. Because the relationship is personal. You are our saint. You are supposed to look after us.

Treccani describes this popular relationship with San Gennaro as one of the great contradictions of Neapolitan spirituality: the saint is expected to descend from his elevated position and share the difficulties, injustices and suffering of his city. That is Napoli. Even heaven is expected to participate in everyday life.

San Gennaro is not alone. The devotion to Padre Pio of Pietrelcina is enormous throughout Campania and southern Italy. There is something particularly Neapolitan about this form of spirituality: the saint is not simply an historical figure. He is someone you can ask for help. Someone whose photograph can be kept at home. Someone whose image can appear beside family photographs. Someone you can speak to. Someone who is expected to listen. The boundary between the sacred and the everyday becomes wonderfully blurred. And perhaps that is why Napoli has always produced such a powerful culture of popular devotion.

Religion here is not necessarily an abstract theological system. It is a relationship. And, of course, Napoli eventually solved the problem of finding a new deity. His name was Diego Armando Maradona. I remember this very well. When people discovered that I came from Barcelona and was a Barça supporter, they once took me to a tiny shrine on Via Benedetto Croce. I looked at the little altar. Flowers. Devotion. Hair. I asked: "Is it the hair of a saint? Padre Pio? A famous artist? Someone from the neighbourhood?" They looked at me as if I had just asked the most ridiculous question imaginable. "È Dio. È Diego Armando Maradona." It is God. Diego Armando Maradona. And I suddenly understood something about Napoli.

The Neapolitans did not necessarily need to separate the sacred from the profane. They could put them together. With flowers. And humour. And absolute sincerity. As a Catalan, I like to think that we had recognised the divinity of the number 10 before anybody else. And then, rather generously, we were given a MESSIah.

But there is another side to Neapolitan spirituality that fascinates me even more. The relationship with death. Napoli does not hide death particularly well. And perhaps that is why death seems less frightening here. You see death represented in art. You see memorials and images of the dead in the streets. You see funeral notices attached to walls announcing the death of a neighbour. You find catacombs beneath the city. You encounter the famous Neapolitan devotion to the anime pezzentelle, the forgotten souls of Purgatory.

The historic centre has an extraordinary subterranean dimension: Roman remains, catacombs and layers of earlier cities exist beneath the streets where modern Neapolitans live. UNESCO itself describes Napoli as a profoundly stratified city in which remains from different historical periods often lie remarkably close together.

The dead are not necessarily somewhere else. They are underneath us. And sometimes, metaphorically, they are beside us. Treccani has described this Neapolitan "underground" not only in archaeological terms, but also as a world of souls, spirits, superstition and relationships with the dead. That is a fascinating coincidence. Beneath Napoli there is an archaeological city. And beneath Napoli' culture there is another invisible city. The city of the dead. Superstition or spirituality? Perhaps we should be careful with the word superstition.

From the outside, it is easy to dismiss beliefs that do not fit neatly into institutional religion as irrational. But cultural anthropology tells us something more interesting. Superstitious practices often emerge where people seek forms of protection, certainty or personal connection that official religion does not necessarily provide. And Napoli has always had plenty of reasons to seek protection. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Epidemics. Wars. Poverty. Sudden death. An unpredictable sea. An unpredictable city. And Vesuvius watching over everything.

Perhaps when life is uncertain, people develop a particularly intimate relationship with whatever they believe might protect them. A saint. A relic. A lucky number. A prayer. A dream. A dead relative. Or, occasionally, a footballer wearing number 10. 

This is why I would hesitate to describe Napoli simply as a religious city. It is more complicated than that. Napoli is devotional. It is superstitious. It is irreverent. It is deeply emotional. It is capable of laughing at its saints while loving them fiercely. It can place flowers before a dead neighbour's photograph and, a few metres away, fill the street with music and celebration. It can pray to San Gennaro and curse him in the same afternoon. It can worship Padre Pio. It can worship Maradona. And it can do all of this without necessarily seeing the contradictions. Perhaps because, in Napoli, contradictions are not problems. They are part of life.

And perhaps that is why today's visit to Santa Chiara has a meaning for The Grandma. Because one of the people who has accompanied her through so many of these Italian adventures is her friend Claire Fontaine.

Claire has been there for the rainstorms, the ferries, the Roman ruins, the impossible roads, the archaeological sites, the last-minute adventures and the occasions when we probably should have made more sensible decisions.

So today, on the feast of Saint Clare, this post is also a little tribute to her. To friendship. To memory. To the people who make places meaningful.

Perhaps this is what I love most about Napoli. It does not always draw the boundaries we expect. Between sacred and profane. Between faith and superstition. Between life and death. Between history and everyday life. Between a saint and a footballer. Between prayer and a joke. Between a church and the street outside it. Everything seems to overlap. And perhaps Santa Chiara is the perfect place from which to contemplate this strange, beautiful city.

Because Napoli has survived empires, dynasties, wars, earthquakes, eruptions and political upheavals. Its churches survived. Its streets survived. Its traditions survived. Its dead survived in memory. And its people continued to laugh, sing, argue, pray, celebrate and fall in love. This is Napoli. A city where faith does not always look like faith. Where death does not always mean absence. Where saints can be scolded. Where gods can wear number 10. And where, beneath the noise, the laughter and the extraordinary vitality of the streets, there is an ancient understanding: We are here for a while.

The dead were here before us. And those who come after us will inherit what we leave behind. Perhaps that is why Napoli celebrates life with such extraordinary intensity. Because it has always known how fragile it is. And perhaps that is why, after all these years, I still feel that when you leave Napoli... you have barely left before you already want to return.

Napoli lives by an unwritten rule: live and let live.

Perhaps that is why its spirituality feels so different. It is not a faith imposed from above, but a faith lived from below -in the streets, in the homes, in the neighbourhoods and in the hearts of its people.

More information: Monastero di Santa Chiara

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity! 
Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!

 

Chiara d'Assisi

HERCULANEUM, A ROMAN LESSON IN URBAN PLANNING

Musings of The Grandma...

There are places you visit for their monuments. There are places you visit for their beauty. And then there are places that make you look at the world around you differently. Herculaneum is one of them.

I first visited the ancient city many years ago, during my Erasmus years in Napoli. I returned on one of my trips with my friend Claire Fontaine, who has accompanied The Grandma on many of her adventures.

That particular visit began at Mount Vesuvius. By the time we came down from the volcano, it was already late afternoon. We decided to visit Herculaneum, assuming that the archaeological site would still be open. It wasn't. We had arrived just as it was closing.

There was no internet, no mobile phone, no online booking system and no way of checking opening hours at the touch of a screen. We simply stood there, rather disappointed, and explained to the man at the entrance that we had come from Barcelona and had no idea whether we would ever have another opportunity to return. He looked at us. Then he let us in. Not officially, not really. He told us that he had to finish closing the site, but that we could spend a few minutes looking from the entrance and take as many photographs as we wanted. We had film cameras with us, and after a long day at Vesuvius we had almost forgotten that we were carrying them. So we did something very different from what we would do today. We simply looked. We stood there and looked at Herculaneum. And I still remember that view. I can close my eyes even now and see the ancient city spread out below us.

From that elevated position, something caught our attention. The streets. We could identify the two fundamental directions of Roman urban planning: the cardines, running across the city, and the decumani, running in the other direction. The regularity of the plan was extraordinary.

The Archaeological Park itself describes Herculaneum's urban layout as remarkably regular, with the decumani running parallel to the coastline and the cardines perpendicular to them, defining rectangular residential blocks. We mentioned this to the man who had let us in. He clearly had not expected that observation. And then something even better happened. He asked us: "Are you in a hurry?" We told him that we had until the last Circumvesuviana train. So instead of spending fifteen minutes there, we spent a couple of hours. That evening became one of those encounters that you remember for decades. We talked about Roman cities. About streets. About orientation. About the relationship between public and private space. About how people moved through a city. About why a city is not simply a collection of buildings, but a system designed around the movement and needs of human beings. And, because we were in Napoli, the conversation somehow also included music. There were wonderful sfogliatellas, delicious ice cream and an unforgettable coffee.

It was not the visit we had planned. It was infinitely better.

The man who had been supposed to close the archaeological site had given us something much more valuable than a few extra minutes inside it. He had given us his time. I don't even know whether he is still with us. He must surely be retired by now. But I have never forgotten him. And this post is, in a way, my small tribute to him.

There is another reason why Herculaneum has always fascinated me. I come from Barcelona. And if you live in Barcelona, you live inside one of the most recognisable urban grids in Europe. The Eixample, designed by Ildefons Cerdà in the nineteenth century, was conceived as a rational extension of the city, based on a regular network of streets and blocks. Cerdà's plan was approved in 1859, and the expansion began after Barcelona's medieval walls were finally demolished.

The standard Eixample block measures approximately 133 metres by 133 metres, while the streets were designed to be around 20 metres wide. The famous chamfered corners were another characteristic element of Cerdà's design.

Of course, Herculaneum and Barcelona are not the same thing. They were separated by almost two thousand years. Cerdà did not simply copy a Roman city. But standing in Herculaneum and looking at its streets, it is impossible for someone from Barcelona not to recognise something familiar. The idea that a city can be planned rather than allowed to grow entirely at random. The idea that streets create relationships between buildings. That orientation matters. That movement matters. That public space matters. That the shape of a city influences the lives of the people who inhabit it.

And suddenly the Roman cardo and decumanus stop being archaeological vocabulary. They become something much more immediate. They become urban language. This is perhaps what makes Herculaneum so extraordinary. The archaeological remains do not merely tell us where people lived. They allow us to reconstruct, with remarkable detail, how they lived.

The site preserves residential and commercial areas, workshops, baths, public buildings and houses with gardens and terraces. The Archaeological Park emphasises precisely this extraordinary ability to reconstruct everyday life at a particular moment in the ancient world. And that is what I find most fascinating. Not the ruins themselves. The people who once walked between them. Someone opening a shop in the morning. Someone carrying food home. Children running through a street. Someone going to the baths. Someone meeting a friend. Someone complaining about the heat. Someone falling in love. Someone making plans for the following day.

People who had no idea that almost two thousand years later, someone would stand above their streets and try to imagine them. The city that disappeared Herculaneum, like Pompeii, was overwhelmed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. But its fate was different. The volcanic material that buried the city preserved an extraordinary amount of organic material and architectural detail, giving archaeologists an exceptional window into Roman daily life. And there is something deeply moving about that. Because preservation is a strange thing. We celebrate it as archaeologists and historians. We marvel at the mosaics, the wooden objects, the houses, the streets and the inscriptions. But behind every preserved object there was once a living person. Every doorway was someone's doorway. Every street was someone's route home. Every house contained somebody's life.

That is why I find it difficult to look at Herculaneum simply as an archaeological site. It was a city. And cities are made of people.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if that man had simply told us: "Sorry. We're closed." We would have gone away. We would probably have taken the train back to Napoli. And Herculaneum would have remained another archaeological site we had visited. Instead, he opened a door that was already supposed to be closed. He gave two young women from Barcelona a little of his time. And, without knowing it, he gave us a lesson that has stayed with me for decades. About Roman urbanism. About cities. About curiosity. And perhaps, above all, about generosity.

I don't remember his name. But I remember the city he helped us see. And whenever I walk through Barcelona, whenever I cross one of the long streets of the Eixample and look down the regular lines of buildings, I sometimes think about that evening in Herculaneum.

Two cities. Two very different worlds. Two very different moments in history. And between them, an idea that has survived for thousands of years: A city is not only the place where we live. It is the way we organise our lives together. And somewhere in Herculaneum, beneath the streets and houses that Vesuvius buried, there is still the trace of a city that knew that very well.

More information: Herculaneum

 

The extraordinary greatness of the Roman Empire 
manifests itself above all in three things: 
the aqueducts, the paved roads, 

and the construction of the drains.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

POMPEII. THE CITY OF PEOPLE, THE VOICES ON THE WALLS

Musings of The Grandma...

There are places in the world where history feels distant. You look at a ruin, read a date, admire a column and try to imagine the people who once lived there. And then there is Pompeii. At Pompeii, history does not feel distant. It feels uncomfortably close.

You can walk along its streets and see the houses where people lived, the shops where they worked, the bakeries where bread was made, the places where food and wine were sold, the fountains where water was collected and the walls where ordinary people wrote messages, jokes, political slogans and fragments of their lives.

You can almost imagine someone opening a door. Someone going to work. Someone buying bread. Someone arguing with a neighbour. Someone falling in love. Someone worrying about money. Someone feeding an animal. Someone planning what they would do the following morning. Except there was no following morning.

In AD 79, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius brought an abrupt end to the lives of many of the inhabitants of Pompeii. Ash, pumice and volcanic material buried the city, preserving an extraordinary amount of evidence of everyday life. The result is one of archaeology's most extraordinary paradoxes: a city survived because its inhabitants did not.

That is what makes Pompeii so difficult for me. It is beautiful. It is fascinating. It is extraordinarily important. But it is also deeply sad.

It is tempting to think of Pompeii as an enormous archaeological museum without a roof. But it wasn't a museum. It was a city. People lived there. They worked there. They cooked, traded, worshipped, complained, celebrated and raised families there. And archaeology allows us to reconstruct some of those lives from surprisingly ordinary things. A cooking pot. A lamp. A wine amphora. A piece of furniture. A shop counter. A child's object. A painted wall. A bakery. A laundry. A stable. A garden. Even a basket whose shape was preserved in the volcanic material.

The Archaeological Park's collections contain tens of thousands of objects from Pompeii and its surroundings, documenting religion, politics, commerce, craftsmanship and, above all, the small details of daily life. And perhaps that is what makes the city so extraordinary. The grand buildings tell us about power. The ordinary objects tell us about people.

Pompeii was not inhabited exclusively by wealthy Romans living in magnificent houses. There were rich people, certainly. Some houses were enormous and lavishly decorated. The largest domus could cover thousands of square metres, with atriums, gardens, dining rooms and servants' quarters. But alongside those houses existed another Pompeii. The Pompeii of bakers. Shopkeepers. Craftspeople. Farmers. Launderers. Merchants. Cooks. Slaves. Freed people. Children. Women. Labourers. People whose names have disappeared but whose work has not.

One of the most evocative places is the thermopolium, essentially an ancient establishment selling hot food and drinks. Pompeii had dozens of them. Their counters contained large vessels built into the masonry where food and beverages were stored. Imagine walking into one of those places almost two thousand years ago. You were not visiting an archaeological site. You were simply hungry. You bought something to eat. You drank something. You paid. You left.

And now, nearly twenty centuries later, archaeologists are reconstructing that tiny moment of your life. That is Pompeii.

Sometimes we talk about Pompeii as though only humans lived there. They didn't. Animals were part of the city's economy and daily life too. Horses, donkeys and other working animals were used for transport and labour. Dogs lived alongside humans. Animals were kept in stables and were part of agricultural and commercial activities.

Recent archaeological work continues to reveal their stories. At Civita Giuliana, just outside the main city, archaeologists discovered a stable containing equine remains, including a horse whose shape could be reconstructed through the plaster-cast technique. The animal had been found beside a wooden trough whose form was also preserved.

And in 2026, new excavations in the bakery of the Insula of the Chaste Lovers revealed the remains of two more large herbivores. These discoveries matter because they remind us that Pompeii was not simply a human settlement. It was an ecosystem. A place where people, animals, plants, food, work and commerce were interconnected.

One of the things I love most about Pompeii is that its inhabitants left their voices behind. Not only the voices of emperors, politicians or wealthy citizens. Ordinary voices. People wrote on walls. Some inscriptions were political. Some were advertisements. Some were declarations of affection. Some were jokes. Some were insults. Some were simply people making sure that somebody knew they had been there. In a strange way, those graffiti make Pompeii feel more modern than many other ancient cities. Because suddenly the people who lived there stop being "the Romans". They become individuals. People with opinions. People with friends. People with enemies. People with a sense of humour. People who wanted to be heard.

I first arrived in Napoli in 1994 as an Erasmus student. It was a very different Erasmus from the one students know today. My university residence was paid for, meals at the university mensa were covered and I had a university transport pass. That gave me the possibility of doing something I really wanted: discovering Campania beyond the classroom.

During the academic year I studied. During the summer, I stayed in Napoli and tried to make myself useful. I volunteered with the Italian Red Cross, helping with social work at a time when the wars in the Balkans were bringing many displaced people to Napoli. And I also offered my help at Pompeii.

Whenever I accompanied visitors, I used to tell them something else. Pompeii is extraordinary. But please, if you have the opportunity, go to Herculaneum. And go to Paestum. Both are extraordinary archaeological treasures, and both can easily disappear beneath Pompeii's enormous shadow. Pompeii is so famous that it sometimes makes everything around it look smaller. It isn't.

Campania is an enormous archaeological puzzle, and Pompeii is only one of its most spectacular pieces. And the puzzle is still being assembled. Excavations continue. New rooms appear. New objects are studied. Old interpretations are questioned. New technologies allow researchers to reconstruct things that seemed lost forever. The Archaeological Park itself describes current research as an ongoing process: Pompeii is still being excavated, documented and interpreted. We are not finished with Pompeii. Not even close.

There is something I feel every time I return to Pompeii. It is difficult to explain. Walking through those streets, I don't only think about archaeology. I think about death. Not in a sensationalistic way. Not because of the plaster casts. Not because of the volcano. I think about the people. The people who went to bed. The people who were working. The people who were looking after their children. The people who were eating. The people who were frightened. The people who perhaps thought they would survive. And the people who didn't.

It reminds me of other places where history has left behind an uncomfortable silence. Flanders. Normandy. Places where thousands upon thousands of human lives disappeared into wars that we now reduce to dates, battles and arrows on maps. Or places much closer to home. The Fossar de les Moreres. The Born. The Camp de la Bota. The Terres de l'Ebre. Places where human beings died and where memory becomes an act of respect. Because ruins are never just stones. A battlefield is never just a landscape. An archaeological site is never just an excavation. Behind every fragment there was somebody who once had a life. Somebody who had a name. Somebody who was loved. Somebody who expected to see another morning.

That is why I don't like the idea of Pompeii simply as a "city frozen in time". It is more complicated than that. Pompeii is a city interrupted. A city whose people were suddenly removed from the future they were expecting to have. And perhaps our responsibility, nearly two thousand years later, is not simply to admire what survived. It is to remember those who did not. To study them. To understand them. To give them back, as far as archaeology allows, their ordinary lives. Their work. Their families. Their fears. Their humour. Their animals. Their food. Their homes. Their voices. Their dignity.

Because the greatest treasure Pompeii has given us is not a fresco, a villa or a perfectly preserved street. It is the possibility of knowing that these people existed. And as long as we remember them, they are not completely lost. Pompeii is not only about the end of a city. It is about the persistence of human memory. And perhaps that is why, after all these years, I still find it impossible to walk through Pompeii without feeling my heart stop for a moment.

The volcano stopped their lives, but it did not stop their stories.

More information: History Extra

 Iam dies alibi, illic nox omnibus 

noctibus nigrior densiorque. 
Tenebrae rursus, cinis rursus, multus et gravis.

Elsewhere it was day; there, night 
-blacker and denser than any night. 
Darkness again. Ash again. Much and heavy.

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus

'IO PARTO, ADIO. TORNA A SURRIENTO, FAMME CAMPÀ...'

Musings of The Grandma...

There are places you visit because they are beautiful. And then there are places that somehow make you want to return before you have even left. Surriento belongs to the second category. 

Perched dramatically above the Bay of Napoli, on a coastline carved into cliffs and terraces, Surriento seems to have been designed specifically to make human beings stop walking, look at the sea and say: Wow. 

And then, almost inevitably, someone starts singing. Torna a Surriento…

Because in Surriento, it is almost impossible not to think of that famous Neapolitan song. But Sorrento is much more than a beautiful view. It is history, music, villas, gardens, cliffs, citrus trees, grand hotels, narrow roads and the Mediterranean in almost every direction. And, in my case, it is also the memory of being hit by a wave of dirty rainwater thrown at us by a luxury car. But let me start at the beginning.

Surriento occupies a spectacular position on the Surriento Peninsula, overlooking the Bay of Napoli. The geography is responsible for much of its character. The town sits on a high plateau above steep cliffs, while the coastline below drops dramatically towards the Tyrrhenian Sea. Roads wind down towards the water, often through slopes and bends that seem to have been designed to test both drivers and passengers. The reward is extraordinary.

From Surriento, the panorama opens towards the Bay of Napoli, Mount Vesuvius and the islands scattered across the horizon. It is one of those landscapes where the sea does not simply form the background. You see it between buildings, beneath terraces, beyond gardens and at the end of streets. And then there are the villas.

Some of Surriento's historic residences and hotels reveal just how long this coastline has attracted wealthy travellers, aristocrats and people looking for somewhere extraordinarily beautiful to live or spend their holidays. Surriento became an important destination during the era of the Grand Tour, when European aristocrats, artists and intellectuals travelled through Italy in search of classical culture, landscapes and inspiration. It is not difficult to understand why they stopped here.

Even today, you can look at the view and understand immediately. And then there are the lemons. Huge Surriento lemons. They seem almost ridiculously large compared with the lemons you normally find elsewhere. Citrus cultivation has been deeply connected with the landscape and economy of the Sorrento Peninsula for centuries, and the local lemon has become one of the symbols of the area. You find lemons in gardens, markets, restaurants, desserts, drinks and, of course, limoncello. Sorrento doesn't merely grow lemons. It has turned the lemon into part of its identity. And somehow, against that blue Mediterranean background, everything tastes even more intensely Mediterranean.

Among Surriento's historic hotels, the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria occupies a particularly fascinating place. The hotel was founded in 1834 and has remained in the hands of the Fiorentino family for five generations. Over its long history, it welcomed an extraordinary list of guests, including artists, politicians, royalty and musicians. One of them was Errico Caruso. The great Italian tenor stayed at the hotel, and his connection with Sorrento became part of the hotel's history. Today, the hotel even has a suite bearing his name. And this is where Surriento and music become almost inseparable. Because once you are surrounded by that landscape, it is very difficult not to understand why someone would write a song asking Surriento to come back.

Torna a Surriento means 'Come back to Sorrento'. The song was written by the brothers Ernesto and Giambattista De Curtis, and became one of the most famous songs of the Neapolitan tradition. It was subsequently performed by some of the greatest voices of the twentieth century, including Enrico Caruso.

There is a fascinating story surrounding its creation and the visit of Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Zanardelli to Sorrento in 1902. The song became associated with the hope that the politician would help improve the town's infrastructure and return to enjoy its beauty. The precise history of the song's composition is more complicated than the popular legend suggests, but its connection with Surriento became permanent.

And honestly? You don't need to know any of that to understand the song. You only have to stand in Surriento. Look at the cliffs. Look at the sea. Look at Vesuvius in the distance. Listen to the voices around you. And suddenly the title makes perfect sense. Come back to Surriento. The funny thing is that Surriento doesn't really need to ask. You are already thinking about coming back.

I have visited Surriento twice. The first time, the region was experiencing a heatwave. Not the pleasant Mediterranean kind of warmth. The other kind. The kind that makes you feel as though the air itself has forgotten how to move. It was suffocating. The second time, I returned with Claire Fontaine, a friend who accompanies The Grandma on many of her travels. And Surriento had apparently decided that one weather extreme was not enough. We were hit by one of those extraordinary August thunderstorms that arrive suddenly and make you feel as if the sky is collapsing on top of you. One minute everything was fine. The next minute, the heavens opened. We had absolutely nothing to protect ourselves from the rain. No umbrellas. No raincoats. Nothing. We were walking down one of those winding roads that descend towards the sea, trying to avoid puddles and, more importantly, trying not to fall. And then we saw it. A shelter. Four metres away. We were almost saved. Almost. At precisely that moment, a high-end car came down the road. It skidded right in front of us. And the tyres sent an enormous wave of water -more than a metre high, or at least that is how it felt- straight over us. We were completely soaked. And dirty. The car stopped. For one glorious second, I thought the driver might actually apologise. Instead, he reversed. He looked at us. He laughed. And drove away. I have never forgotten that face. Or that car. Or the feeling of standing there, drenched from head to toe, looking at each other and wondering whether to laugh or commit a crime. So now, whenever I hear Torna a Surriento, there is a small part of my brain that remembers the magnificent cliffs, the Mediterranean, the lemons, the villas and the beautiful Surriento...

...and another part that remembers that idiot in the expensive car.

Perhaps this is what travelling really is. Beautiful landscapes mixed with completely ridiculous memories. And yet, I would go back tomorrow. That is the strange thing about Surriento. Even after the heatwave. Even after the thunderstorm. Even after being hit by a metre-high wall of dirty water. I would return. Tomorrow. Without hesitation. Because Surriento has something that photographs cannot quite capture. It is not only the cliffs. It is not only the villas. It is not only the gardens or the lemons. It is the feeling of being somewhere suspended between land and sea, between history and the present, between the enormous landscape of the Bay of Napoli and the tiny details of everyday Mediterranean life. It is the sound of a song that has been asking people to return for more than a century. It is the smell of citrus. The colour of the sea. The impossible roads. The gardens hanging above the cliffs. The memory of Caruso. The sound of Neapolitan voices. And, sometimes, an August storm that arrives without warning. Surriento is not perfect. Perhaps that is precisely why I love it. Because the places we remember most vividly are rarely the ones where everything went according to plan.

They are the places where something happened. Something unexpected. Something ridiculous. Something beautiful. Something that stays with you. And Surriento stayed with me. I haven't even finished writing this, and I already want to go back. Torna a Surriento. Come back to Surriento. I think I will.

More information: Errico Caruso, Neapolitan Language in Opera

Ma num mme lassà
Non darme sto tormiento
Torna a Surriento
Famme campà.

But do not leave me,
Do not cause me this torment;
Return to Sorrento,
Let me live.

 Ernesto and Giambattista De Curtis

CAPRI, WALKING BETWEEN TIBERIUS AND AUGUSTUS

Musings of The Grandma... 

There are words that carry history inside them. In Catalan, we have a wonderfully expressive word: tiberi -a sumptuous, abundant feast. We say fer un bon tiberi, literally, to have a good Tiberius.

The word is probably an allusion to the Roman emperor Tiberius, whose reputation for excess, debauchery and cruelty became legendary. And this is where language becomes fascinating: sometimes we use an expression every day without having the slightest idea that, hidden inside it, there is an emperor, an island and two thousand years of stories.

On Capri, Tiberius is everywhere. The emperor spent the final years of his reign on the island, where he built a series of magnificent villas, the most famous being Villa Jovis, perched high above the sea.

But the idyllic landscape has a darker memory. Ancient writers, particularly Suetonius, portrayed Capri as a place of cruelty and excess. He tells us that condemned prisoners were thrown from a cliff into the sea after being tortured. Other, even more sensational stories surrounded Tiberius and his private life -stories that historians today treat with considerable caution.

Perhaps that is one of the most fascinating things about history: the truth, the rumour and the legend eventually become entangled.

And somewhere in Catalunya, every time we say Avui farem un bon tiberi, we are unknowingly keeping a tiny linguistic souvenir of Tiberius alive. A feast. An emperor. An island. And a word that has survived for two thousand years. Not bad for a piece of vocabulary.

Today Capri is one of the world's best-known tourist destinations. It has luxury hotels, designer shops, famous restaurants, celebrities and all the glamour that has accumulated around the island during the last century. But underneath that image is something much older. There is prehistoric human presence. Greek settlement. Roman imperial architecture. Medieval history. Monasteries. Fortifications. Fishing traditions. Lemon groves. Volcanic and tectonic landscapes. Caves and cliffs. And thousands of years of people looking at the same sea and deciding that this was a place worth staying.

Capri is beautiful, certainly. But beauty is only the beginning. Capri is an island where geology became landscape, landscape became mythology, mythology became history, and history became memory. And perhaps that is why, even after leaving it, the island stays with you. For me, it is the smell of the Mediterranean. The enormous lemons. The Faraglioni. The ruins of Villa Jovis. The light. And somewhere in the background, the sound of a group of very determined Neapolitans shouting at a ferry crew:

“Aspettate!” (Wait!)

Luckily, they did. And we made it back to Napoli. Just.

We had spent the whole day trying to see as much of Capri as possible: the giant lemons, the funicular, Anacapri, the Roman ruins and the spectacular views. We simply forgot one small detail: the time. When we finally realised that our ferry back to Napoli was about to leave, we ran towards the harbour at full speed. A group of people started shouting at a crew member, asking them to lower the boarding ramp. Somehow, they waited. We sprinted like Olympic athletes and made it aboard the last ferry. Otherwise, we would have spent the night on Capri -which, admittedly, would not have been the worst place in the world to get stranded.

We spent only one day on Capri, but we tried to fit an entire island into it. Perhaps that is why we almost missed the ferry. Yet what I remember most is not any single monument. It is the Mediterranean itself: the light, the sea, the lemons, the narrow roads, the boats, the ancient stones and the extraordinary feeling that history was everywhere.

We were young and wonderfully unprepared for the world. There were no smartphones, no Google Maps, no WhatsApp and no way of knowing when the next ferry would leave. We didn't even know the phone number of our university residence. If we missed that ferry, there was no app to find us a room, no message to tell the university where we were and no GPS to guide us anywhere. So we ran.

Today, we would probably be wiser. Or at least slower. We would simply accept that we were spending the night in Capri and find somewhere to sleep -even if it meant waiting at the harbour until morning.

But perhaps that is what made travelling in those days so memorable. We had fewer tools, but we depended much more on people. A group of complete strangers shouted at the ferry crew and helped us get on board. They didn't know us. They simply saw two young people running desperately towards a departing ferry and decided that we should not miss it.

Thirty years later, technology can solve almost everything in minutes. But sometimes I wonder whether, in making the world so accessible, we have lost a little of the beautiful uncertainty that once came with travelling. And, by the way, there was no AI to help us. We had to run.

More information: Capri

 The wind comes freshly out of the east. 
Capri is growing into a wonderful clearness.

Angela Brazil