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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 soul in the brilliance of glory!
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