Paid subscribers, our April “Ask Me Anything About Italy” meeting will be on April 17th at 8 pm ET. Subscribers will receive the Zoom link the day before. This is your opportunity to ask all your trip planning questions, or other questions you may have about art, history, and food in Italy. If you can’t join us live, you can email me your questions and I’ll answer them on the call. I send out the replay and resource list the following day.
This two-part episode will explain why I think Naples is Italy's most vibrant, fascinating city. We’ll visit the Rione Sanità, a working-class district next to the Centro Storico. When Naples was a Greek, and then a Roman town, the Sanità was just outside the city gates and was where people buried their dead. The early Christians built catacombs in this district, carved out of the soft tufa stone deposited in Naples by ancient volcanic eruptions. In the Middle Ages, mudslides covered these ancient structures, and another city developed on top. During the glory period of Naples in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Sanità was home to noble palaces and artisans whose shops lined Via Cristallini. Then, the area fell into decline and was the territory of the Camorra, the loathsome mafia of Naples, especially in the 1980s and 90s.
Today, Sanità remains a working-class neighborhood inhabited by artists and a local community invested in preserving and sharing its many treasures, from the early Christian catacombs to the Blue Church, which local artists recently reclaimed.
In this episode, you’ll meet Ines Sallemi, co-owner of Atelier Ines. This boutique hotel provides travelers (not tourists) an entryway to the creativity and mystery that define this neighborhood. Together with her husband and artist Vincenzo Oste, whose art studio is inside the palazzo, they’ve taken the spirit of the place, which used to be an open-air theater that lets guests have an authentic experience of the city.
Directly below the wine cellar at Atelier Ines is the Ipogeo Cristallini, a 2,300-year-old Greek mausoleum. Though it was discovered a century ago, it has only been open to the public since 2022. I’ll take you inside the Ipogeo in part 2 of this episode, which will be available next week.
00:00 Introduction and Monthly Q&A Announcement
01:10 Exploring the Historic Center of Naples
02:00 Discovering the Sanità Neighborhood
02:54 Ancient Temples and Modern Art in Naples
04:23 A Visit to Atelier Ines
06:39 The Duality of Naples: Beauty and Danger
07:54 Life and Community in Sanità
09:07 The Unique Hospitality of Atelier Ines
19:39 The Rich History of Naples
30:06 A Personal Connection to the Past
31:42 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview
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