Southern Italy, day I: Napoli

January 25th, Day 1:

Early on Thursday morning, January 25th, the CUA architecture kids hopped a bus to Termini Station in Rome to take the train south to Napoli and start our southern Italy excursion. After a pretty painless hour and a half train ride, we rolled into the train station in Napoli and met a fleet of cabs to take all of us to our hotel, the Hotel Mediterraneo, which is close to the Bay of Naples and most of the places we visited while in the city.


It didn't take long to see the numerous differences between Rome and Naples. Naples is much more of a typical modern metropolitan area, with relatively new buildings and even a few skyscrapers, whereas Rome is, as a whole, much older with lower buildings... its similar to the difference between New York City and DC I suppose. Naples also feels a bit more lived in and colorful, if a little run-down in places. Everywhere there was laundry hanging from balconies... one of the only unpleasant things about Italy is that while they can create some of the most beautiful architecture ever produced, the whole electric clothes-drying concept seems to have eluded the country as a whole... which makes for an interesting experience when our entire apartment has to wash clothes, like when we return from a 12-day southern Italy trip... but I digress.





Here is a view out my hotel window of the crowded street in front of the hotel.






The hotel was super nice, although having to stick your room key into the wall to keep the lights on took some getting used to. After we settled into the hotel and rested for about a minute and a half, we met in the lobby with our sketchbooks to analyze the nearby Spanish Quarter and the Galleria.



Here is a picture of a typical street in the Spanish Quarter... extremely narrow, full of people and motorini speeding by, with balcony after balcony hanging overhead. A few of us found a good cheap restaurant here where everything was homemade, good times.







Coming up on the Galleria is a really remarkable experience. You're walking along a busy shopping street, Via Toledo choked with tourists and "saldi" shoppers, and you see a large doorway up ahead on your left. You turn to look inside, and an incredible space is suddenly and unexpectedly laid out before your eyes. An entire street, capped with a soaring barrel vault of glass and metal high above, where you expect to see only another Intimissimi store. It was pretty breathtaking seeing this space for the first time.




After walking farther into the space, you see that the enclosed space is an intersection, with the barrel vaults coming together at an enormous dome. With the clear blue sky beyond, it felt like we were inside and outside at the same time.








An angel statue just below the dome.







Standing in the middle of Galleria Umberto.

A shot of where the streets come together under the dome.

Basically the only thing marring the experience was the constant badgering of our class by the homeless people wandering around the Galleria. We spent a good deal of time there and kept being approached again and again... I feel bad about their situation, especially when they have a leg that looks like it got mangled by a shark, but making me want to punch them is probably not the best approach for relieving me of a couple euro. Nothing like standing in the Galleria sketching, having someone walk up next to you and blow the eraser dust of your page, and then expect to get paid for the service. As Dave so eloquently put it as we were on our way out: "BASTA!" (Enough!)

After the Galleria, we walked further down Via Toledo to Piazza Plebescito to view a very interesting building and public space. It is a combination of two extremely successful architectural icons: the Pantheon and St. Peter's Square, only pulled off substantially less successfully, due to the change in proportion from elegant to clumsy in the transition. Something tells me that the space enclosed in the huge drum behind the facade isn't perfectly round...

Stanley approached our group with the opportunity of getting 15 euro tickets to that night's production of Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" in the opera house across the way from the Galleria and a bunch of us took him up on it. In the time before the show, Amy, Vikki, Mo and I walked down to the port, grabbed some food and took some pictures.


Here is the Galleria dome from Piazza Plebescito.








A huge castle down by the port.











A boat pulling into the port right before it started to rain.







The great view from our opera box.

The entire opera experience was incredible and I'm incredibly glad to have gone. I had no idea we were going to get box seats, or that the opera house was going to be that huge and beautiful... pulling back the red velvet curtain and stepping into our box was another experience on par with seeing the Galleria for the first time. Everything was so ornate... if I had been wearing a tux instead of my Midwestern tourist attire, I would have felt pretty fancy too. The opera itself was pretty interesting as well... the singing was in English, with Italian supertitles displayed above the stage. The singers that played the leads, Candide and Cunegonde, were amazing, and I'm a sucker for theater and good singing, so I really enjoyed the show.


Being entertained at Pizzeria Brandi.

After the show, we met the rest of the group at Pizzeria Brandi, ate some great pizza, drank some good wine, and had a great time.
Here is a picture of some of our dinner entertainment... not pictured is Stanley's story of how he got kicked out of 1st grade or Amy with the surprise baby that was handed to her. Dinner was great, and the exhausting first day was a fantastic start to a great trip.