Sometimes it's impossible to see a place that you really want to see... because it just isn't there any more.
Many things drew me back to Naples... but one in particular was the chance to visit the Piazza Mercato, the historic Market Square that I previously wrote about and featured paintings of in this blog (An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Street Fight in Naples – 19 January 2021).
I was prepared for disappointment (I knew that it was now all but abandoned) but not on the level that I was to experience it.
The piazza had once been the almost-theatrical centre stage of life – and death – in Naples.
The 17th-century Masaniello revolt had taken place here, going through every possible stage from euphoric celebration to the darkest violence.
It was a place of public torture and execution... and it was also a place of commerce and the joys of life... all played out beneath the backdrop of Vesuvius, the volcano that could erupt and wreak havoc at any moment.
Domenico Gargiulo made the most remarkable depiction of its heyday (see below). But when I finally walked out across that desolate space, I couldn't even manage to get a decent photograph to convey the terrible emptiness of it.
My picture at the top of this post is a mess... a picture of the hodge-podge at just one corner of the square. That obelisk fountain was one of two built in the 18th century – which added little to the place. The only common feature in my picture and Gargiulo's is the tower of the Carmine church.
The past is definitely another piazza...
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| Piazza Mercato by Domenico Gargiulo |
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