The City of Laundry

Naples is extraordinary. I have to admit that I didn’t know much about the city in advance of arriving yesterday. We only had a few hours to explore but I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the sheer density of living found here, right in the centre of the city. Space is at an extraordinary premium. The narrow streets feel like canyons. The infrastructure hangs on the outside of the buildings, and draped in between too, air conditioners juxtaposed with shrines, scooters competing for space with all the bins. And wherever you look up is laundry, clothes and sheets hanging from balconies, to the extent that I wonder if each load earns a city commission as being part of its biggest tourist attraction. It’s hard to imagine any of it emerging clean after being subjected to the exhaust gases of the constant traffic below, which is manic. There is an incredible, almost dystopian energy to this place, which is both fascinating and exhausting and not a little sad, especially when it comes to all the little shops selling figurines, tens of thousands of them, of every imaginable kind. That was downright weird, so weird that I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d found one of myself.