—Naples is honeycombed with hundreds of manmade tunnels and caves. There are also a lot of simple unplanned holes in the ground in the form of cave-ins and sink-holes. These often occur beneath the streets and buildings at higher elevations. The city is largely built on a hill, and you can only dig and put up new buildings and lay down new miles of track for subway lines before the hill starts to sag and crumble in protest. Four such holes opened last week along the street called Vico San Carlo alle Mortelle just below the major road of Corso Vittorio Emanuele II in the Chiaia section of Naples. Five buildings were evacuated, causing the displacement of 297 persons. One of the sink-holes opened within the church of San Carlo alle Mortelle (photo, top). There were no injuries, perhaps due to the fact that the cave-ins happened in the middle of the night when people were inside and asleep. The road, itself, bears heavy traffic in the morning and afternoon rush hours. Well, bore traffic; the street has been closed.

— A very (!) large tunnel boring machine nicknamed la talpa is now burrowing its way eastwards from Mergellina at the rate of 10 meters a day for as long as it takes to put a tunnel beneath the remaining five stations (already under construction) of the number 6 Metro line. That is a distance of about two km. That will finally link the western part of the city directly to Piazza Municipio and the port.

—New quarters for 600 Rom—gypsies—will be built in the Scampia and Soccavo sections of Naples. That will cover about 80% of the gypsy nomad population in and around Naples. The new quarters will cost around 35 million euros and will look more or less like other "popular" blocks of flats in those two areas. "Popular" doesn't mean that people like them; it means that they can be built quickly and stuffed with people. The main impetus for the project is the need to get rid of the squalid gypsy encampments. There are no colorful horse-drawn wagons or gypsy violinists playing Monti's Czardas; there is a lot of open sewage, though.

—Identical acronyms are confusing. I happily report that ANCEM (Associazione Napoli Capitale Europea della Musica/Association Naples Music Capital of Europe) will continue its concert season until Christmas with five concerts in the centrally located Palatina Chapel of the Maschio Angioino instead of in the Mostra d'Oltremare (Overseas fair Grounds) in Fuorigrotta. I also report that I didn't know what the acronym ANCEM stood for. The first expansion I came across was Associazione Nazionale Contro gli Errori Medici--National Association Against Medical Errors. I thought, Wow!, Music Against Medical Malpractice! That sounded just weird enough to interest me. Alas...

—It's one thing on the streets, but a number of Neapolitan hospitals (!) report the presence of itinerant vendors wandering the corridors and peddling everything from sandwiches to coffee to newspapers and—particularly egregious—cigarettes to patients in the ward for respiratory ailments! That case came to light yesterday when the private rent-a-cops that guard these institutions busted a kindly 64-year-old gentleman and found hundreds of packs of black-market (no tax stamps) lung-busters in his 24-hour bag.

—It feels good to be able to write this! The largest closed church in Naples, the church of the Girolamini—closed for over 30 years—has been partially reopened and may be visited. The large white house of worship is part of the entire Girolamini complex and sits on the north side of via dei Tribunali just around the corner from the intersection of that street and via Duomo. The façade bears magnificent sculpture by Giuseppe Sanmartino; the interior contains works by Francesco Solimena, Luca Giordano, Belisario Corenzio, and many noted artists of the Neapolitan Baroque. Construction of the church was begun in 1592. As recently as the 1968, the interior was still spectacular enough to stand in for the cathedral of Naples in a film entitled Operazione San Gennaro [Eng. title: The Treasure of San Gennaro]. It bears mentioning that when we say "reopened," we mean in the cultural sense—that is, as a museum or art gallery—not as a house of worship. That has happened elsewhere in Naples—at the church of Santa Maria Donna Regina, for example.

—In a city already awash with ongoing major construction of underground train tracks and surface stations to go with them, someone at city hall has seriously proposed the construction of a suspension cable lift (as in chairs or cabins that you ride up to the tops of mountains!) that would connect the National Archaeological Museum at the bottom with the museum at Capodimonte at the top. That ride would climb about a mile and be suspended along the way by a series of massive pillars built in the Sanità section of the city. Residents along the proposed route are against the idea, and skeptics at city hall recall a similar experience many years ago: When the Mostra d'Oltremare (Overseas Fair Grounds) opened in the 1930s, it was at one end of a spectacular suspension lift that ran above Fuorigrotta and to a station high up on the scenic Posillipo ridge. It was a great ride, but fell victim to urbanization. The lift was closed in 1961 to permit buildings to go up around the suspension pillars, themselves The buildings went up very fast, well before anyone could figure out what to do with the pillars. The pillars are still there! Some windows in the upper floors of nearby buildings open directly onto these concrete mastodons. The pillars cannot be removed without the use of explosives, so it's safer (and uglier) to leave them in place. The same thing would surely happen with this new one to Capodimonte, say critics.

—When the cops crack down on street vendors who have set up small stalls around the city, the vendors are usually illegal and fly- by-night; that is, they'll open again tomorrow at another location. This time, however, the vendors are legitimately in business; they are the owners of the many Christmas shops along via San Gregorio Armeno that deal in the trappings of the presepe, the manger display so iconic of Christmas in Naples. Most of the vendors have for many years used outside stalls and tables in front of their shops to display their wares. Someone decided that the stalls were not in keeping with paragraph something-or-other of subsection blah-blah of the Uniform Code of Manger Displays (or something) and they have all been removed. The street is now as clean as a whistle. That means no tourists, either, for—lo and behold (seems to fit, here)—people like the outside displays! They like to wander up the street and browse and shop! A group of shop owners is now presenting their case to the appropriate administrative numskull responsible for this disaster. Verily, I say unto you, the displays will be back for the Christmas rush. (Believe it or not, it is gearing up already.)

—CRESME stands for Centro ricerche economiche sociali di mercato per l'edilizia e il territorio [Center for social and economic research on construction and real estate]. It has just released an eye-opening report (for those whose eyes were for some reason still closed to these problems): the province of Naples (of which the city of Naples is the capital), one of the five provinces in the Campania region of Italy, is at great risk in case of of earthquake or flood. In case of earthquake, 1,651 school buildings and 33 hospitals in the province are at significant risk. In case of flood, 354 schools and 4 hospitals are at risk. The report comes on the heels of the recent flood disaster in Messina at the beginning of October and is not that far removed in time (1998) from the Sarno floods in the province of Naples that killed 137 persons.

—Word comes that Naples will host the 63rd International Astronautical Congress in 2012. (Indeed, people have been thinking about space travel for quite a while; the first congress was in Paris in 1950. That single-stage rocket ship in the logo on the right looks suspiciously like a V-2!) That might help to make up for the loss to Barcelona in the bid for the 2007 America's Cup regatta. It has even encouraged the Naples City Parenting Persons to reach for the stars in another way: they have announced a plan to be one of the Italian cities that will bid for the 2020 summer Olympic Games. Stay tuned.