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There are places in Napoli where history is written in stone. And then there are places where history is written in salt. Borgo Marinari belongs to the second kind.
Built on the small island of Megaride, beside Castel dell'Ovo, the Borgo is one of those places where Napoli seems to have grown directly out of the Mediterranean. The little harbour, the boats, the stone buildings, the narrow passage connecting the island to the city and the constant presence of the sea create a landscape that feels almost detached from the Napoli around it.
Today, it is a beautiful and much-loved place. Restaurants, cafés, boats and visitors have transformed it into one of the city's most attractive corners. But before the visitors came, there were people who simply worked here. People whose lives depended on the sea. And that is the story I want to remember.
When we visit a Mediterranean harbour today, we tend to look at it as scenery. We admire the boats. We photograph the water. We sit at a restaurant overlooking the sea. We watch the sunset. But there was a time when the sea was not scenery. It was work. It was food. It was uncertainty. It was the family income. It was the reason someone got up before dawn. And sometimes, it was the reason someone did not come home.
Borgo Marinari developed around its relationship with the sea, particularly fishing. The small harbour was part of a much larger maritime world connected with neighbouring Santa Lucia. I like to imagine this place before it became one of the picturesque corners of Napoli. I imagine a fisherman waking up while the city was still asleep. There would be no tourists. No cameras. No restaurants preparing tables for lunch. Only the darkness, the smell of the sea and the sound of a boat being prepared. He would check the nets, the ropes, the engine or the oars. He would probably know the weather better than any forecast could tell him. He would know the sea in the same intimate way that a farmer knows his fields. And then he would leave. Perhaps his wife would still be awake. Perhaps she had helped prepare the boat. Perhaps she would spend the morning repairing or preparing nets, sorting the catch when it returned, taking care of the household and the children, and helping to sustain an occupation that was never exclusively the work of the person who went to sea. Because fishing has always been much more than fishermen. It has been families.
One of the things I find most fascinating about traditional fishing communities is how much of the work happens without ever leaving the shore. A fishing boat may belong to the person who goes out to sea, but the life surrounding that boat belongs to many more people. There are nets to prepare and repair. Fish to clean. Equipment to maintain. Boats to look after. Food to prepare. Children to raise. Accounts to manage. And there are the endless domestic tasks that have historically fallen disproportionately on women, often without being recognised as part of the economic activity of the family.
The Mediterranean fishing tradition was therefore also a story of women. Women who waited. Women who worked. Women who repaired. Women who sold. Women who carried the household when the sea took the men away for days or weeks. Women who understood that a change in the wind could change the entire day. Their work was often invisible precisely because it happened on land. Yet without it, the boat could not leave.
The sea is beautiful. It is also dangerous. This is perhaps something we forget when we romanticise the Mediterranean. We have turned the sea into an image. Blue water. White boats. Sunsets. Pine trees. Lemons. Fishing villages. Postcards. But for the people who make their living from it, the Mediterranean has never been merely beautiful. It can be violent. A sudden storm can transform the sea in minutes. Engines fail. Nets become entangled. Boats collide. Visibility disappears. And weather that looks insignificant from the shore can become a serious threat several kilometres offshore.
Fishing remains one of the world's most dangerous occupations. And yet, when we talk about Mediterranean culture, we often talk about food, architecture, mythology, music, literature and art. We talk much less about the people who actually went out into that sea and brought part of it back to us. Perhaps we should.
There is something deeply Mediterranean about fishing communities. Not because all Mediterranean fishermen live in the same way -they certainly do not- but because the sea has created connections between very different cultures for thousands of years. The same sea connects Napoli with Barcelona. Napoli with Marseille. Napoli with Sicily. Napoli with Greece. With Tunisia. With Malta. With the Balearic Islands. Different languages. Different histories. Different religions. Different political borders. But the same sea. And, for centuries, remarkably similar rhythms of life.
The fisherman leaving before sunrise. The family waiting on shore. The fish arriving at the harbour. The nets drying in the sun. The smell of salt and diesel. The morning market. The knowledge passed from father to son -and increasingly, from one generation to another in ways that do not always follow traditional gender roles. This is not folklore. It is intangible cultural heritage.
Perhaps I feel this particularly strongly because I come from Barcelona. Barcelona has always had a complicated relationship with the sea, but fishing is an essential part of its history. The fishermen's relationship with the area that would become Barceloneta goes back centuries, and the fishing community became deeply intertwined with the neighbourhood. For generations, Barceloneta was not simply a neighbourhood next to the sea. It was a neighbourhood of the sea. The fishermen's boats occupied the waterfront. Their families lived nearby. Nets were repaired. Fish was sold. Maritime trades shaped the identity of the community. Even Santa Maria del Mar carries traces of that maritime history: fishermen and sailors contributed to its construction and were represented within the basilica.
Today, Barceloneta is one of Barcelona's most visited neighbourhoods. People come for the beach. For the restaurants. For the views. For the Mediterranean lifestyle. And there is nothing wrong with that. But sometimes I wonder whether, when we look at the sea from Barceloneta, we remember the people who once looked at exactly the same sea because their livelihood depended on it.
Much of Barcelona's fishing activity has moved away from the old neighbourhood, while ports such as Vilanova i la Geltrú continue to maintain an important fishing tradition.
The transformation of Barceloneta is a familiar Mediterranean story: places created by maritime communities can eventually become places consumed as picturesque versions of the very culture that created them. This is where the story becomes uncomfortable. Fishing communities are ageing. Young people are often reluctant to enter a profession that can be physically demanding, dangerous and economically uncertain.
The European Union itself recognises the problems of generational renewal, economic pressure and the particular difficulties faced by small-scale fisheries. In 2021, small-scale fisheries employed around 60,000 fishers in the EU and accounted for 49% of employment in EU fisheries; more than half of this sector is concentrated in the Mediterranean. At the same time, the European Commission acknowledges that young people are turning away from fishing and that small-scale fishing communities face economic hardship.
And this creates a paradox. We want sustainable seas. We want healthy fish stocks. We want responsible consumption. We want Mediterranean cuisine. We want local products. We want traditional coastal communities. But none of these things can survive if there are no people left willing or able to work at sea. Protecting the Mediterranean cannot mean protecting only the fish. We must also protect the people whose lives have been intertwined with those fish for generations. Sustainability must include them.
There is something almost poetic about the fact that fishing is simultaneously one of humanity's oldest occupations and one of the professions whose future is increasingly uncertain. We have sophisticated boats. Satellite navigation. Weather forecasting. Modern engines. Scientific monitoring. European policies. And yet the fundamental relationship remains extraordinarily simple: Someone goes out to sea. Someone waits for them to return. The sea provides. And the sea demands respect.
Perhaps that is why fishing has always generated such strong communities. You cannot negotiate with the sea. You cannot order it to behave. You can only learn it. Respect it. Read it. And accept that you are never completely in control. There is a humility in that which modern life sometimes forgets.
Today, Borgo Marinari is no longer the fishing village it once was. Its identity has changed, as almost every Mediterranean coastal community has changed. The little harbour is now surrounded by tourism, culture, restaurants and leisure activities. Official tourism information describes it today as a place centred on culture, art and tourism, while its maritime past remains part of its identity. But I do not want to look at Borgo Marinari and see only what it has become. I want to imagine what it remembers. I want to imagine the boats leaving before dawn. The fishermen checking their nets. The women working on shore. Children growing up knowing the names of the winds. The smell of fish arriving at the harbour. The tired faces at the end of a long day. The relief when the boats returned. And the silence when one did not.
Because behind every picturesque Mediterranean harbour there is a human history that is much less picturesque. There is work. There is sacrifice. There is danger. There is love. There is waiting. And there is an extraordinary amount of knowledge accumulated over generations.
Perhaps this is what I want to say today. The Mediterranean is not simply the sea that surrounds us. It is one of the great cultural forces that made us who we are. It crossed our borders before our borders existed. It connected languages that were supposedly different. It carried merchants, soldiers, migrants, philosophers, artists and travellers. It carried wars and ideas. It carried food, music and stories. And it carried fishermen. Thousands upon thousands of them. Men and women whose names will never appear in history books, but whose work fed cities and communities for generations.
So when I look at Borgo Marinari, I do not want to see only Castel dell'Ovo rising above the water. I want to see the people beneath its shadow. The people who knew the Mediterranean not as a postcard, but as a workplace. The people who understood that the sea could be generous one day and merciless the next. The people who left home before sunrise so that someone else could have fish on their table. And the women whose hands, often invisible to history, helped hold that entire world together.
This is my small tribute to them. To the fishermen. To the sailors. To the women who repaired the nets. To the families who waited. To the communities that grew around the harbours. To those who came home. And to those who did not.
Because the Mediterranean we love was not created only by poets, emperors, architects and sailors of ancient legend. It was also created by ordinary people who woke up in the darkness, pushed a boat into the water and went to work. And perhaps the most respectful thing we can do today, when we sit beside the sea and admire its beauty, is to remember that someone once risked everything to make a living from it.
The sea is beautiful. But for those who work on it, it has never been just beautiful. It has been home. It has been work. It has been life.
More information: Castel dell'Ovo
At sea, there are no taverns.
Neapolitan proverb
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