Despite its brazen fame, Naples hides itself. Always seedy and aristocratic, but still more noble than miserable, it shows off its scars and beauty like a double emblem, but it keeps its most intimate nature to itself. To really discover Naples, you must lift the veil of stereotypes, using the best tool, your feet, for finding what is underneath. Walk. Naples is the ideal destination for loungers and loafers and this book is a long, stirring exploration of the city of postcards and dark legends where the camorra and shrines, sneers and passion, decay and dreams shamelessly mix. Baroque cupolas and Levantine warehouses, Caravaggio and street food. The startling gardens in the greyness of Via Foria and a devil painted on the stomach of a woman in Mergellina. The last urban farmers who stubbornly continue growing cabbages and oranges on the ancient steep Scudillo road, and the cellars of the Aragon towers where reggae parties are held in the evenings. Then there are the Spanish Quarters where undeclared “cash in hand” work has become more widespread than ever, and the caverns of the Sanità where obscene sculptures for warding off evil are produced, derelicts who read Freud and the fresellari who sell street food in Borgo Sant’Antonio. You discover that under the skin of Naples Giuseppe Marotta’s smile is interwoven and coexists with Curzio Malaparte’s rage and, around every corner, art hits you like a violent caress. Just look up where that detail on the wall of an antique palazzo that indecently shows the veins of yellow tuff eaten away by time and shadow.