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| View of Naples from Castel Sant'Elmo |
Despite the picturesque view of Naples present in the first photo, my impressions of one of Italy’s oldest cities started out fairly underwhelming. Following my groups departure from the train station, we proceeded to meet our professor further into the city. The first stop on the agenda was one of the last factories in the world to still make authentic, handmade leather gloves. Along the way our professor asked me what I thought of the buildings and the general area in which we were walking. After some hesitation I honestly answered that the area looked “rundown,” to which the professor promptly agreed with me. It was only two blocks later that he pointed out several buildings that, by contrast, looked very modern and well put together. Such sudden changes in the layout of Naples would continue to surprise me over the course of the weekend. The sheer density of the city leaves little room for consistency, and just turning a corner can drop one into an entirely different experience.
The initial stop at the glove factory was the first strong indicator of what surprises one can find in Naples. What was originally an apartment building had been transformed into a center of business that produced over 60,000 leather gloves a year. The owner also informed us how he employed around a hundred people from the community. Without being shown inside I would have just assumed the building to be like any other apartment complex. It would never have occurred to me that the location housed a business with international renown.
Moving on from the glove factory, we stopped for lunch before heading towards one of Naples’ several castles, the Castel Sant’Elmo. On the way I began to notice another trait of Naples that would only become more apparent with time, that being the verticality of the city. After walking around for hours one quickly notes how the city is riddled with inclines and steps to traverse its many roads and side streets. It’s as though the city’s designers couldn’t find anymore space to build so they decided to just start going upwards, but without building the skyscrapers common to US urban centers. Looking down from Castel Sant’Elmo certainly lent some credibility to this statement. There is a blatant lack of vegetation in the main parts of the city that are publicly accessible. So little, in fact, that our professor showed us one of the few park areas remaining in the city late into second day.
Among the activities we did on the second day, two that stick out are the walk through the Spanish Quarters and our meal at the Association for the Revival of Street Theatre (ARTS). Both experiences left very different impressions when examined together. With the Spanish Quarters there was a strong feeling of alienation like we didn’t belong. This isn’t too surprising as we were Americans wondering in a large group through the area. The homes in the area were all open, with clothes hung out in plain sight and families condensed into small living spaces. It was certainly consistent with the rest of Naples with how little wasted space there was. The meal at ARTS on the other hand was very accommodating as one would expect from street performers. We were greeted upon our arrival by an original street performance and several other unique music styles. It was shocking to find out that the small home we were eating in was apart of an organization that had presence throughout most of Naples.
Reflecting on the trip as a whole, it is fairly easy to see the relation to our class’ focus of organized crime. Naples has such a large population and yet the streets are so packed that the people are essentially forced to interact with each other. Legal ventures like the Omega glove factory or ARTS can appear so well hidden and integrated, while locations like the Spanish Quarters can be so filled to the breaking point. Such human capacity and ambiguity would appear ideal for an organization that wished to conduct illegal activities without drawing excess attention. Any rumblings could easily get lost in the clutter of the city with its numerous streets and ever morphing landscape.
Brian Cutler, Economics of Organized Crime
Arcadia University - The College of Global Studies
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