Crumbling

October 01, 2006

A decade or so ago, the city government here set out sight-seeing paths through the city under the name Le Vie dell'Arte, or "Streets of the Arts." Each path has an itinerary with the major monuments -- churches, palaces, castles, etc. -- mapped out.

The problem is, most of central Naples looks like this:

This is one of the stops on the sight-seeing route that passes along the Via Tribunali, a long street that follows the path of the decumanus maior of the old Roman city. I'm not quite sure what I was supposed to be looking at at this particular stop. The overflowing garbage cans, the grafitti and the torn signs were indeed attractive, but no different than what I see everywhere else in the Naples.

Maybe I was supposed to be looking at the enormous Baroque palace in the background, which has been divided into a thousand squalid apartments.

Maybe I was supposed to be visiting these two churches that were on the same block.

Unfortunately, both were sealed as tight as tombs.

The first church belongs to the Gerolamini, the brothers of the order of Saint Philip Neri. My Naples guidebooks cite it as one of the most important works of Baroque architecture in the city. But it's closed. And it has been since 1943, having been damaged during the war. One of the guidebooks says that it is "being restored" ...

The second church is Santa Maria della Colonna, home of the city's first music conservatory, where local composers, including Pergolesi, were resident. Also closed.

When I was visiting the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore on another day, a woman was asking the tour guide why it was that that church was in such spectacularly good condition, while so many of the other historic monuments in the city were crumbling or just plain rotten.

The tour guide replied, "That is because the money for the restoration came from the Catholic Church, not the Italian government."