See Naples and Live – 17: Street of Shame

 

©Nigel Summerley

Naples has quite a bit of previous when it comes to problems with rubbish.

In the 1990s and 2000s refuse disposal (or non-disposal) in the city and the surrounding area developed into a full-blown crisis. 

The scale of the literally toxic involvement of the Camorra in the waste business is covered in Roberto Saviano's excellent book Gomorrah (see this blog An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Gomorrah - 13 Jan 2021).

In 2010 pictures of uncollected rubbish piling up in the streets of Naples made international news.

Today in the city centre things are much improved and there are plenty of well-labelled recycling bins.

But you can still occasionally turn a corner and see something like the picture above. This was grotesquely awful but at the same time so apparently carefully arranged that it could have been some sort of art installation. 

And it's quite remarkable for the diverse range of foul objects gathered together on one short stretch of pavement. If you look closely you may be able to spot some empty beer bottles stuffed inside a disused toilet basin.

Naples doesn't do things by halves...