It's a sunny day today and it would be a waste to stay indoors, so I'll have a walk into the city centre.
Would you like to come with me? Let's go, I'll show you some of the weirdness of my hometown.
I believe this is a contraddictory place: people here is in love with food, but there is no way you can have it the way you like it. You must eat it the proper way; they are bighearted and will try to help you in any possible way if something happens, but you need to beware them because they could cheat you. This city is a huge, modern metropolis stuck in the middle age, with plenty of ghosts, legends and funny habits.
It must be hard to understand if you're not from here, but I'll do my best to give you an insight.
We (not me, we as a population) have a solid catholic background, so it's pretty common to find small altars almost in every corner
but you could as well bump into this
Yes, it's exactly how it looks like: this guy actually belongs to our pantheon. Despite the catholic belief that idolatry is sin, he's regarded as a demigood from locals.
They even rewarded him with an italian citizenship ad honorem last summer and we had a big party.
My opinion about the whole situation is: he'g got pretty cool hair and I don't really care (I'm born and breed italian, after all :) ). But let's leave him alone and go back to our journey,
can you see this long, endless alley?
It's called Spaccanapoli. The name litterally means: "it cuts Naples" because, well, it crosses the city from one end to the other.
As I said, we are too lazy even to think sometimes. It's hard to get lost though.
(This picture is not mine, I downloaded it from the internet. Looking forward to have a drone)
Before Christmas it's supercrowded and it's very common to run into scared kids who lost their parents and sad petty thieves who cannot work as there is no room for them to comfortably lift your wallet. It can take you half an hour to walk a few metres and this happens because there are very good handcraft shops here. They mostly do presepi, do you know what a presepe is?
Basically a dollhouse,but you can only play with sheeps and the baker.
And here we are! In the first square before a square, before a square, before a square, before a square, before a square...
And this guy
represents the god Nilus.
It's actually a fake, the original statue got lost long ago (maybe stolen, hidden somewhere closeby, someone says)
Are you wondering what the hell is doing an ancient egyptian god in the middle of the street? According to the most accredited theory egyptians put it here somewhere between the 2nd and the 3rd century in order to mark one of the angles of a triangle in which the spiritual power of the town reaches its maximum.
It's a fascinating story to me.
A bit further you can see Jesus' square with its two churches. In a lack of fantasy we named them "the new Jesus church" and "the old Jesus church" and now it's too late to put it right.
The old one looks like a regular church, while the other one hangs over us with its black, creepy, massive front.
Can you see the symbols carved in the stone?
Apparently nobody knows exactly what's their meaning. The main theory we came up with is: either it's an encrypted sheet music (they say if you manage to play all the notes in a raw the devil will come), or the signs were supposed to help the builders to assemble the bricks.
I like to believe that aliens landed here long ago and they left us a message.
Is that creepy enough?
If you turn left, 30 degrees, you will see Jesus' obelisk.
Of course we figured out something for that as well.
The statue on top represents Jesus, but if you look at it from a particular perspective, with the right light, you will see the Death.
I personally tried, looks like it works.
Well' it's getting late and I'm starving. I'll go for an ice-cream.
I know you all believe we can only feed with pizza, but I swear: it's just another urban myth.
