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| ©Nigel Summerley |
As well as matters of life and death, Naples is rather good at mystery.
And if you're interested in close-to-unsolvable mysteries, you should go and stand beneath the facade of the great Church of Gesu Nuovo, where you will find yourself staring upwards and wondering what on earth it's all about.
For a start, the front of the church is covered with what is known technically as "diamond point rustication", or in simpler terms a lot of pyramids (as you will see from these pictures).
Why? It was a look that became fashionable in the Renaissance and Naples tended to outdo other Italian cities in this respect. It was seen as a way of "ennobling" a building, or tarting it up. Similar rustication had previously been used on castles, presumably to make them look as strong and powerful as possible, and this use of pyramids to project power spilled over into the design of large civilian buildings.
But the mystery of Gesu Nuovo is something else: because each of its pyramids bears its own peculiar engraved symbol (as you will see if you study them from below) and no one has ever been able definitively to explain why.
One theory is that they are letters from an esoteric language casting a spell that would protect the building.
The other is that they are from the Aramaic alphabet and represent notation for a piece of music which can be played by reading the notes from right to left and from bottom to top. I overheard an Italian guide explaining this theory to a party of tourists. "And why not?" he concluded. "Naples is a city built on the edge of rationality."
And I wouldn't argue with that.
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| ©Nigel Summerley |
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| ©Nigel Summerley |
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