“Naples is a living and ruined city.
Everything is beautiful, horrendous and messy, nothing works well except the past.
But anything is possible. […]
If there were a capital of the soul,
Halfway between East and West, between senses and philosophy, between honor and deception, it would be based here.
In the middle of the city opens in Spaccanapoli, a straight road of more than a kilometer, narrow and vociferous,
which divides the huge agglomeration in two.
It is the heart of this Babel of history.”

Stanislao Nievo, “The meadow at the bottom of the sea”