5-8
The TrovaTrip was over. All things considered, it had gone quite well. After a hectic first day, the group had settled into a nice routine. A nice camaraderie developed among the trip members (a feat, considering the fact that the 23 of them had nothing in common besides an interest in Roman history). The excursions I planned went better than I had hoped; my favorite was the walk up to San Miniato al Monte, where we heard vespers being chanted before emerging to a glorious view of sunset over Florence. Even the farm visit on the last day turned out reasonably well – though I suppose there are worse places to spend a sunny morning than a Tuscan vineyard. We lunched at length, patted the local dogs, returned to Rome for a final walk around the Quirinal and Termini, and then – after a farewell dinner and book signing – it was all over.
I was exhausted. I had not completely recovered from my African illness (I was prone to explosive fits of coughing throughout the trip), and five days of being continuously “on” as a trip leader had exhausted all my social reserves. The last thing I wanted to do was film for four days. That, however, was what my schedule demanded, and so I went to Naples.
Crowded, chaotic, cacophonous Naples is not a place to soothe the nerves. From the moment the tourist emerges into the madness of the train station, he is plunged into unfiltered Italy. It had been three years since my last visit, and nothing had changed. I hauled my bags across Piazza Garibaldi, left them in a pharmacy that doubled as a luggage deposit, and trudged back to the station to face the Circumvesuviana. The ticket line was longer than I had ever seen it, and the platform packed ten deep. I managed to grab a seat, and spent the next 40 minutes ignoring the resentful looks of the passengers standing in the aisles.
I had planned to go to Herculaneum first, but an unannounced schedule change sent the train past the site. So I started with Pompeii instead. The crowds were the worst I had ever encountered at the site – a seemingly endless succession of tour groups, charging up the narrow streets and clogging every building. But I had to film, and so I filmed.
After a few hours, sick of the congestion, I stepped over a rope and walked down a street closed to visitors. There, briefly, Pompeii was magical again. Wildflowers nodded, scarlet and gold, among the ruins. Vesuvius loomed behind sun-splashed walls. Birds sang.
Exiting by the Villa of the Mysteries, I returned to the station, where I bought an extortionately priced ticket for the “express” to Herculaneum. I ran into one of the trip members on the platform, and swapped Pompeii war stories until the train came.
Even Herculaneum was crowded. A new rule required visitors to leave their backpacks in lockers at the site entrance, so I was left defenseless against successive waves of spattering drizzle and blinding sun. As at Pompeii, the only moments I really enjoyed were those in which the crowds parted enough to let the ruins feel like ruins. I was briefly alone in the palaestra, where a tunnel hacked through the dark volcanic debris framed a Hydra-headed fountain. Other tunnels, closed to visitors, ran off into the darkness. I ached to follow one.
Back in Naples, I performed my usual ritual of sitting down to a pizza at Da’ Michele. Then, grease-smeared and content, I recovered my baggage and slogged up six flights of stairs to my hotel. It was short on amenities (an en-suite bathroom would have been nice), but it did have a balcony looking out toward the Bay over the campaniles of the city. As I sat there, reading and nibbling on a square of dark chocolate, a rainbow sprang into being over the Bay. For 15 minutes, as the sun set and the summit of Vesuvius glowed, I watched as the rainbow flickered between Capri and Sorrento. Then, as the sky darkened and lights began to speckle the city, it disappeared.
5-9
When I raised the blinds, I found the sky over the Bay heavy with clouds. The air smelled like rain. After checking to see that my umbrella and jacket were still in my daypack, I echoed back down those long flights of stairs and struck out through the chaos to the Bibliotheca Nazionale, home of the Herculaneum Papyri. A few months before, I had contacted Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II, to ask whether I could film in the library. After a half-dozen emails to various scholars, I was given permission to film for an hour.
I met Federica at the library entrance, received a visitor card, and followed her through a warren of tall rooms and narrow corridors lined with ancient-looking books. The smell of old leather suffused the building, cut here and there by a cool breeze from an open window. At last, at the end of a long and dimly-lit hallway, we came to the heavy wooden door of the Papyri section. The papyri were stored in ranks of aluminum cabinets. Each cabinet had rows of pull-out trays; and on each tray was a glass-topped case containing a blackened page of papyrus.
Around the cabinets were a few displays. One enshrined the only papyrus to be successfully unrolled in its entirety. Another held curiosities: the wooden umbilici around which papyri were rolled, the ends of five scrolls welded together, a half-unwound carbonized lump. Across the hall, the machine used to open papyri in the eighteenth and nineteenth century was outlined by a tall window.
I filmed all that I could. Federica removed a papyrus from its tray and set it under a microscope, where she was working to disentangle two charred layers. When I was done recording the process, I bent over the papyrus. On the fragile surface, stabilized with wadded cotton, I could just make out a few Greek letters.
After leaving the library, I spent an hour or so filming on the streets of Naples. It wasn’t easy. Every time I lined up a shot, a moped would materialize and whine across the screen, or an old man would emerge from an alley and begin speaking at an incredible volume. Just as I finished, it began to rain.
I spent the rest of the day in the Archaeological Museum. I was surprised by how much work had been done since my last visit, and burned out my phone battery twice taking pictures and scans. Torrential rain battered at the windows and roared on the roof.
At last, having exhausted both myself and my camera, it was time to go. Pulling on my jacket, I plunged into the rain and the chaos of the Via dei Tribunali. Despite the rain, the crowds were dense, and an anarchy of umbrellas swirled and scraped along the streets. Vespas snaked through, joined by the occasional car or delivery truck, which pushed everyone and everything they carried to the rain-darkened walls. I stopped at another of the iconic pizzerias along the street, and ordered the usual fare. Then it was back out into the rain, to prepare for the morning’s journey to Rome.
