Today, The Grandma wants to talk about the bradyseism, a phenomenon that it can be lived in the Campi Flegrei. Mostpeople think earthquakes happen suddenly. The ground shakes. Buildings tremble. Then everything becomes still again.
The Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean Fields), west of Naples, tell a very different story. Here, the Earth doesn't just shake -it breathes. This extraordinary phenomenon is known as bradyseism, from the Greek words bradys (slow) and seismos (movement or earthquake). Unlike the violent motion we normally associate with earthquakes, bradyseismis the gradual uplift or subsidence of the ground, sometimes over years or even decades.
Imagine standing on the shore and returning years later to discover that the land beneath your feet has risen several metres -or sunk beneath the sea. That is exactly what has happened repeatedly in Campi Flegrei throughout history.
The explanation lies deep below the surface. Beneath the caldera, magma and hot volcanic fluids slowly move through a complex network of fractures. As pressure increases, the ground gently swells upward. When the pressure decreases, the land gradually sinks again. The process is usually measured in centimetres each year, but over time the changes become astonishing.
Few places on Earth provide clearer evidence of this than the Temple of Serapis in Pozzuoli. Despite its name, it was not a temple but a Romanmarketplace built nearly two thousand years ago. Three marble columns have become world-famous because they preserve tiny holes made by marine molluscs. These shellfish can only survive underwater, meaning the columns must once have stood beneath the sea before rising again into the open air. Those small holes are far more than marks left by nature.
They are a geological diary written over centuries. No written chronicle could describe the slow movement of the Earth's crust with such remarkable precision. Bradyseism is not merely a curiosity from the past. It is still happening today.
Since the early 2000s, and particularly since 2018, Pozzuoli has experienced continuous uplift accompanied by thousands of small earthquakes. In some periods, the ground has risen by more than one metre within just a few years. Scientists carefully monitor every centimetre using satellites, GPS stations and seismic networks, making Campi Flegrei one of the most intensively observed volcanic regions in the world. For local residents, however, bradyseism is not simply a scientific concept. It is part of everyday life.
Doors suddenly become difficult to close because buildings have shifted by a few millimetres. New cracks appear in walls. The harbour must occasionally be adapted as the coastline slowly changes. Every small earthquake reminds people that the ground beneath them is alive. And yet, life continues. Children go to school. Fishermen leave the harbour before dawn. Families gather for dinner overlooking the Bay of Napoli. Perhaps that is what makes Campi Flegrei so fascinating. Here, geology is not hidden beneath mountains or buried in textbooks. It unfolds beneath people's homes, beneath Roman ruins, beneath cafés and narrow streets.
The Earth is constantly moving -but so slowly that an entire generation may barely notice it. Bradyseism reminds us that not all geological change is sudden or catastrophic. Sometimes the planet whispers instead of shouting. And nowhere does it whisper more eloquently than in the Campi Flegrei.
Campi Flegrei is one of the few places on Earth where you can almost feel the planet breathing beneath your feet.
We cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives wouldn't have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness.
Today, The Grandma has been seeing her Neapolitan photos. The Grandma loves Napoli (Naples) and the Campania. She was living some years in this amazing city and she was in love with its people. Neapolitan are loyal, passionate and strong people who have survived terrific events during the 20th century -World Wars, emigration, earthquakes and the last eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Near Napoli, there is Pozzuoli. This city is well-known by suffering the effects of a terrible earthquake in but also by being the residence of one of the most popular Italian actresses, Sophia Loren, the diva who was born on a day like today in 1934.
Pozzuoli began as the Greek colony of Dicaearchia, in Greek: Δικαιαρχία. The Roman colony was established in 194 BC, and took the name Puteoli which it has his roots from puteus, meaning well, also used by sibyls to predict the future, and osco fistulus (cave). An alternative etymology of Puteoli from the Latin puteo (to stink), referring to the sulfuric smell in the area, most notably from Solfatara. This is because Pozzuoli lies in the centre of the Campi Flegrei, a volcanic caldera.
Before talking about Sofia Loren, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Ms. Excel course.
Sofia Villani Scicolone (born 20 September 1934), known professionally as Sophia Loren, is an Italian film actress and singer. She is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Encouraged to enroll in acting lessons after entering a beauty pageant, Loren began her film career at age 16 in 1950. She appeared in several bit parts and minor roles in the early part of the decade, until her five-picture contract with Paramount in 1956 launched her international career. Notable film appearances around this time include The Pride and the Passion, Houseboat, and It Started in Naples.
Her talents as an actress were not recognized until her performance as Cesira in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women in 1960; Loren's performance earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1962 and made her the first actress to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance.
Sophia Loren
She holds the record for
having earned six David di Donatello Awards for Best Actress: Two
Women; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963); Marriage Italian Style
(1964) for which she was nominated for a second Oscar; Sunflower (1970);
The Voyage (1974); and A Special Day(1977).
After starting a family
in the early 1970s, Loren chose to make only occasional film
appearances. Most recently, she has appeared in American films such as
Grumpier Old Men (1995) and Nine (2009). Aside from the Academy Award, she has won a Grammy Award, five special Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award), a BAFTA Award, a Laurel Award, the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the Honorary Academy Award in 1991.
In 1995, she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievements, one of many such awards.
In 1999, Loren was named by the American Film Institute the 21st greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema, and she is currently the only living actress on the list.
Sofia Villani Scicolone was born on 20 September 1934 in the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome, Italy, the daughter of Romilda Villani (1910–1991) and Riccardo Scicolone, a construction engineer of noble descent.
Loren's parents had another child together, her sister Maria, in 1938. Loren has two younger paternal half-brothers, Giuliano and Giuseppe. Romilda, Sofia, and Maria lived with Loren's grandmother in Pozzuoli, near Naples.
During the Second World War, the harbour and munitions plant in Pozzuoli was a frequent bombing target of the Allies. During one raid, as Loren ran to the shelter, she was struck by shrapnel and wounded in the chin. After that, the family moved to Naples, where they were taken in by distant relatives. After the war, Loren and her family returned to Pozzuoli. Loren's grandmother Luisa opened a pub in their living room, selling homemade cherry liquor. Romilda Villani played the piano, Maria sang, and Loren waited on tables and washed dishes. The place was popular with the American GIs stationed nearby.
Sophia Loren
At age 15, Loren as Sofia Lazzaro entered the Miss Italia 1950 beauty pageant and was assigned as Candidate #2, being one to the four sharing contestants representing the Lazio region.
At age 17, as Sofia Lazzaro, she enrolled in acting class and was selected as an uncredited extra in Mervyn LeRoy's 1951 film Quo Vadis (1951), filmed when she was 17 years old. That same year, she appeared in Italian film Era lui... sì! sì!, where she played an odalisque, and was credited as SofiaLazzaro. She appeared in several bit parts and minor roles in the early part of the decade, including the La Favorita (1952).
Carlo Ponti changed her name and public image to appeal to a wider audience as Sophia Loren, being a twist on the name of the Swedish actress Märta Torén and suggested by Goffredo Lombardo. Her first starring role was in Aida (1953), for which she received critical acclaim. After playing the lead role in Two Nights with Cleopatra (1953), her breakthrough role was in The Gold of Naples (1954), directed by Vittorio De Sica. Too Bad She's Bad, also released in 1954, and (La Bella Mugnaia) (1955) became the first of many films in which Loren co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni.
Over the next three years, she acted in many films, including Scandal in Sorrento, Lucky to Be a Woman, Boy on a Dolphin, Legend of the Lost and The Pride and the Passion.
Loren became an international film star following her five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures in 1958. Among her films at this time were Desire Under the Elms with Anthony Perkins, based upon the Eugene O'Neill play; Houseboat, a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant; and George Cukor's Heller in Pink Tights, in which she appeared as a blonde for the first time.
In 1960, she starred in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women, a stark, gritty story of a mother who is trying to protect her 12-year-old daughter in war-torn Italy. Loren's performance earned her many awards, including the Cannes Film Festival's best performance prize, and an Academy Award for Best Actress,the first major Academy Award for a non-English-language performance or to an Italian actress.
During the 1960s, Loren
was one of the most popular actresses in the world, and continued to
make films in the United States and Europe, starring with prominent
leading men.
Sophia Loren
In 1964, her career reached its pinnacle when she received $1 million to appear in The Fall of the Roman Empire. In 1965, she received a second Academy Award nomination for her performance in Marriage Italian-Style.
Among Loren's best-known films of this period are Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (1961) with Charlton Heston, The Millionairess (1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (1960) with Clark Gable, Vittorio De Sica's triptych Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) with Marcello Mastroianni, Peter Ustinov's Lady L (1965) with Paul Newman, the 1966 classic Arabesque with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando.
Loren received four Golden Globe Awards between 1964 and 1977 as World Film Favorite-Female.
Loren
worked less after becoming a mother. During the next decade, most of
her roles were in Italian features. During the 1970s, she was paired
with Richard Burton in the last De Sica-directed film, The Voyage
(1974), and a remake of the film Brief Encounter (1974).
Other
movies of this decade were Academy award nominee Sunflower (1970),
which was a critical success, and Arthur Hiller's Man of La Mancha
(1972), which was a critical and commercial failure despite being
nominated for several awards, including two Golden Globes. O'Toole and
James Coco were nominated for two NBR awards, in addition the NBR listed
Man of La Mancha in its best ten pictures of 1972 list.
In 1982, while in Italy, she made headlines after serving an 18-day prison sentence on tax evasion charges -a fact that failed to hamper her popularity or career.
In 1991, Loren received the Academy Honorary Award for her contributions to world cinema and was declared one of the world cinema's treasures. In 1995, she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.
In Grumpier Old Men (1995), Loren played a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, and Ann-Margret. The film was a box-office success and became Loren's biggest US hit in years.
Loren is a Roman Catholic. Her primary residence has been in Geneva, Switzerland, since late 2006. She also owns homes in Naples and Rome.
Loren is an ardent fan of the football club S.S.C. Napoli. In May 2007, when the team was third in Serie B, she (then age 72) told the Gazzetta dello Sport that she would do a striptease if the team won.
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