An appropriate definition for this city is certainly that it is “a paradise inhabited from devils”, a splendid city, rich of history and natural beauties, always sunned and near the sea, but neglected from its inhabitants. Naples is a city full of contradictions, sometimes violent and sometimes generous with its inhabitants and with those who can appreciate its aspects and traditions, its lanes that can hold different cultures and impossible dreams. The sun seems to lighten the weight of happy and sometime dark centuries.
The city often seems to be a set for comedies played in the Neapolitan roads where people live in flats at the ground floor, called “low flats”.
Pulcinella is the mask who represents the Neapolitan folklore; he is always hungry and he can embody the Neapolitan noisy character and its shrewdness in the attempt to hide sadness and poverty of people who have had many dominations and humiliations.
Neapolitan people love too much the game of the lottery, a way to escape from the rude true life. Lottery is sometime based on the interpretation of dreams and events details with the aid of the smorfia, the book with the directory of the numbers with the relative interpretation.
The festivities, that were diffuse during the Borboni’s period, offer a distraction to the Neapolitan people from its problems; they have ancient origins, like that of Saint Gennaro on the 19th of September and the first Sunday of May; the festivity of Madonna of the Carmine on the 16th of July with the procession of Madonna statue and the fireworks; the festivity of Piedigrotta, on the first of September with the parade of the wagons, fireworks and several other events. In the Christmas period the lane of S. Gregorio Armeno shows its stalls with multicolour little statues, mirror of a secular tradition that has deep roots, that can also be appreciated in numerous churches and in particular in the Certosa of S. Martino where the Cuciniello crib can be admired.
The handicraft in Naples and in its province is particularly developed especially with the production of Capodimonte china that goes back to manufactures founded from the Borboni dynasty; the working of the leather; the working of the coral into Torre del Greco; the working of the gold into the area of the goldsmiths; the working of the tarsie into Sorrento and the splendid ceramics of Vietri.
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