Naples: Scenes from the Siren City

An expansive and entrancing cultural history of Naples, from its mythic origins to the city's contemporary allure where sirens still sing their seductive songs.

Naples paradoxically struggles and thrives in the shadow of Vesuvius, Europe’s only active mainland volcano, which erupted, most famously, in AD 79, burying the nearby tow ns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. It has continued to erupt, most recently in 1944, w hen the underground gods w ere outraged by the carnage of war. Scientists tell us that the longer an eruption is postponed, the greater its eventual force. Yet the city and its inhabitants go about their daily affairs—“dancing on a volcano”—with an abiding understanding of the precariousness of life.

Praised and damned by artists, writers, painters, and musicians, Naples refuses to capitulate. Europe became fascinated by the city in the late eighteenth century, an enchantment that flowered in the nineteenth century. For Italians, Neapolitan culture remains a universe unto itself, never fully integrated into the national psyche. It is a city of startling polarity: affliction and luxury, despair and hope, fate and self-creation. Perhaps no other place in Western Europe can compare in its diversity. Paris and Venice are great theaters, but neither has the ironic theatricality found on the streets of Naples. The city is a grand stage, and Neapolitans pride themselves on their performance.

In Naples, the noted scholar of Italian history Stanislao G. Pugliese offers a lively, richly textured look at this siren city and its unique place in our mental geography. Naples continues—oftentimes despite itself—to produce some of the most dynamic and engaging encounters with the modern world.