Ithaca In Words – and Pictures

Jane Cochrane oversees her paintings being displayed

Preparations are under way for the official launch of Walking In The Footsteps Of Odysseus, the new guidebook to Ithaca by Jane Cochrane in which I played a bit part as walk-checker and sub-editor.

A capacity audience is expected to be at Paddington Library for the event on 28 April when Jane will be in conversation with me, talking about the genesis of the book and her love affair with the island so closely linked to Homer's Odyssey.

Whether or not you are going to the launch, you are now able to see some of Jane's beautiful Ithaca paintings on show at the library – for as well as being a meticulous researcher and writer, she is also a talented artist.

More information at www.janeocochrane.co.uk.

Amsterdam Nuisance

 

When is a guidebook not a guidebook? Possibly when it's called Secret Amsterdam.

My recent series of blogs, See Naples and Live, owed a good deal to some great travel and history books, not least the excellent Secret Naples by Valerio Ceva Grimaldi and Maria Franchini, published by Jonglez.

Naively I bought the Amsterdam volume in the same series, from Stanfords, just before going to spend a few days in the city, thinking that it would unlock delights similar to those I had been led to in my favourite Italian city.

It was not to be. 

A visit to the French garden of the Institut Francais sounded enticing... until it turned out that the Institut Francais was no more. The building was empty and, thanks to a local shopkeeper who ushered us through her store, we were able to see that the garden had long been derelict – it didn't even have any decent weeds.

The hi-tech spaceship-like interior of the ultra-fashionable Shoebaloo footwear store sounded like something out of this world... and so it proved to be, since its designer interior had been stripped out and got rid of, to be replaced with something that could only be described as a fairly ordinary shoe shop.

The Boutique of the Little Ladies, a 19th-century association dedicated to giving women financial independence, sounded well worth a visit... but the address at Leidseplein 33 didn't appear to correspond to any building in or around this square.

Having become a little wary, we checked, the evening before, the information that the entry to the Garden of the Geelvinck Hinlopen House Museum was indeed via the rear at Keizersgracht 633... to find that address clearly disused. We didn't go back...

I suppose in the end all this was my fault for not reading the small print on the final page of the book and the publication date of 2012. But should guidebooks be on sale that long after their use-by date? In a charity shop, maybe... surely not in a mainstream store?

You Too Can Follow Odysseus

Jane Cochrane's brilliant new Ithacan guidebook, Walking in the Footsteps of Odysseus, is now available to order online – details at www.janeocochrane.co.uk.

And she will be in conversation (with me) for an official launch on the evening of 28 April at Paddington Library, London W2. If you want to be there, you will need to book at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-in-the-footsteps-of-odysseus-tickets-269509499167?aff=ebdssbdestsearch.

In the Footsteps of Telemachus

If there is anyone out there who hasn't had enough of reading my blogs on An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague and An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague, I have an article in The Guardian this week about literally one of the high points... Click here

See Naples and Live – 25: The End of Another Odyssey

©Nigel Summerley

When I saw this reproduction head in an antiques shop window in Naples, it was like meeting an old friend.

It's Odysseus of course – a very old friend. I had last encountered this depiction of him during my 2020 trip when I visited Sperlonga on Italy's Odyssean Coast [see this blog An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – 12: 22-28 September 2020].

As I've mentioned before, there is a big connection between the travels of Odysseus and the west coast of Italy, but it was still a lovely surprise to find him here in the heart of Naples.

And the slow train that finally took me from Naples back to Rome a few days later afforded me a glimpse of one of the most magical places from my own odyssey in 2020 – and from that of Odysseus many, many centuries before.

It was Monte Circeo... once an isle where the sorceress Circe was said to have roamed, but now a promontory, even though it still looks like an island [see this blog An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Islands, 9 January 2021].

Glimpsed from a train window... Monte Circeo,
the isle of Circe  ©Nigel Summerley

After that, I rode the train into the sunset... and my wonderful adventures in Naples came to an end...

©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live – 24: Buona Notte

 

©Nigel Summerley

I love Naples. It's as simple as that. New York, London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam... they're all amazing in their way. But they have nothing on Napoli.

In this series of Neapolitan blogs I've hardly mentioned Vesuvius, that looming ever-presence that reminds the city of the thin line between life and death, between today and perhaps no tomorrow.

When my friend Z and I emerged from our Hermann Nitsch experience [see this blog See Naples and Live – 13: Bloody Weird, 18 November 2021], this was the view of the rooftops of Naples that we saw, with shadowy Vesuvius on the horizon and a bright moon glowing through the evening clouds. It was a perfect moment... a marvellous way to take in this perfectly imperfect city... which was so hard to say goodbye to.

See Naples and Live – 23: Personal Drainers

©Nigel Summerley

The worst job you ever had is probably nowhere near as bad as that of those who once laboured in the Neapolitan catacombs of San Gaudioso in the 17th century. 

God knows how, but the monks who ran the place came up with a novel way of preserving the well-off dead for posterity – and making some extra money in the process.

Down beneath the church of the Basilica Santa Maria della Sanita in Naples, I was shown the stone benches where the corpses of the rich used to be sat against the wall and then (with buckets placed beneath them) punctured to drain off all their fluids.

This process took a while apparently, so the body drainers, the schiattamuorti, sometimes had quite a few customers sitting in a row, waiting to be fully desiccated.

It must have been like working in some sort of a cross between a care home and Hell.

There was no fresh air coming into the catacombs – apart from when trap doors above were opened to lower a new corpse into place. The lack of ventilation combined with the noxious effects of exposure to decomposing bodies meant the lives of the schiattamuorti were constantly at risk.

When one of the dead was thoroughly dried out, the body was buried, but what remained of its precious head was stuck in the walls of the catacombs; and then a bizarre portrait of a skeleton wearing the clothes of the deceased was painted beneath it.

This ritual continued for several decades before someone noted how unhygienic – not to mention slightly unhinged – it was and the practice was brought to an end.

All the bones were eventually removed from the catacombs along with the front halves of the skulls on display. As you'll see from these pictures, the remains of the skulls – and the accompanying frescoes – are still very much visitable and visible.

The Catacombs of San Gaudioso present a weirdly wonderful cocktail of life, death and superstition...  just like Naples itself.

©Nigel Summerley

©Nigel Summerley