—The Royal Apartments in the Royal Palace in Naples are always a pleasure to wander through. I was pleased to see some big- time restoration going on: there is a workshop on the history and restoration of tapestry set up. Also, there is somewhat of a permanent workshop on the restoration of art and furnishings as part of a degree program for students of Suor Orsola university. I was fortunate to catch a few of them at work (photo). They were in the midst of a one-year hands-on practicum as part of a degree in Conservazione dei beni mobili e artistici. When I was there, they were working on the restoration of a number of large, ornate doors. Most of the students are young women intent on pursuing a career in art restoration.

—An infamous scene from Francesco Rosi's 1963 film Le mani sulla città [Hands on the City] shows a bunch of corrupt politicians and land speculators feasting on a cake model of the Bay of Naples, devouring everything in sight. It happens in real life, too! In Giugliano, near Naples, 38 people are under investigation—judges, contractors and possibly some real bona fide criminals—for having thrown up 98 housing units and a hotel along an historic section of the famed Appian Way. It was all to be part of Parco l'Obelisco, a planned tourist village. Investigation continues, bank accounts have been seized and all of the housing has been sequestered. Round up the usual suspects.

—The regional Campania government has just allotted 228 million euros to finish large sections of the new metropolitana, including the airport station at Capodichino airport (aka Naples International Airport). The station is supposed to be in service sometime in 2013, but that date is optimistic. In any event it will be— according to published literature on the subject—the only metro station in Italy on the premises (well, beneath the premises) of a major airport. (It is also the largest ongoing construction project in Italy, with the exception of the nation-wide high-speed train system currently being built.) The airport station will be one link in the chain of stations that lead away from the main train station, up and out along the long Secondigliano corridor (other stations on that stretch are currently under construction) to the terminus at Piscinola in Scampia (already in service as the terminus of the already functioning Vomero section of the line that leads into the city); that will complete the giant metro circle around the entire city, linking all points to the port, the train station, and the airport.

—By law, throughout Europe all public buildings and most private buildings where the public might gather (cinemas, for example) now have to provide access for the handicapped. I haven't counted the number of wheelchair ramps in European major cities, but I take note of them in Naples. The local papers report that a young man, Emmanuel, can now go to high school like any other kid after only one year and nine months of hassle to get one elevator that works and to build one wheelchair ramp, items that are legally required in the first place. This is not some outback one-room school house; it's a major high school (S. Maria di Costantinopoli) near Piazza Dante in the heart of the city.

—The Campania region has allocated €2,400,000 to repair the 140 meter bridge that leads from the island of Procida to the small satellite isle of Vivara. Construction is expected to start soon. The bridge was originally built in 1957 and functioned more or less regularly until 1999. By that time, the isle had become a nature reserve, successfully resisting efforts over the years to—among other things—sell it off for development a tourist trap village. Speaking of bridges, on July 15, 2001, Vivara got into the Guinness Book of World Records when a group of instructors from the FISS (Italian Survival federation) strung the world’s longest Tibetan bridge from the S. Margherita promontory on Procida over to Vivara. A traditional Tibetan bridge consists of a rope used as a footpath and two upper lateral handrail ropes at about a meter above that footpath. The triangular configuration of the three ropes is made firm by thick lateral braces running the length of the bridge. The Procida-Vivara version was 362 meters long. The rope bridge was put up just to set a record and was taken down shortly thereafter; it was somewhat less than traditional in that it used a special synthetic rope.

—The southernmost of the three major tunnels (i.e., the one nearest Sorrento) on the road along the Sorrentine peninsula closed in late October) and will remain closed until March 31, 2010. Work is underway to link the Vico Equense-Seiano tunnel to the new Scrajo-Pozzano tunnel. All of this will eventually create a five- kilometer by-pass around the crowded bathing establishments along the coast and facilitate traffic on the Sorrentine coast road. In the meantime, however, the first weekend of closure was a disaster for anyone in any semblance of a hurry; traffic has to be rerouted through the local coastal town of Vico Equense (which the now closed tunnel by-passed), leaving drivers inching along for hours through the narrow streets of the town and leaving residents of that town awash in a sea of traffic. It gets better; this year won't do it—look forward to another closure next October sometime.

—You don't need Bernoulli's Principle to know which way the wind is blowin'. Recent letters to the editor in the papers have complained about Capodichino airport and planes landing from the south-west, over the heavily-populated Vomero section of Naples. It's dangerous and it's noisy, they say, and flights come in until one in the morning. True, true and true. They didn't use to do that and the airport authorities don't care about real people, they say. Wrong and wrong. The physics of flight require planes to take off and land into the wind; it increases relative air-speed over the wings, providing more lift, which is just what you want when you are trying to maneuver a giant tin can through the two most dangerous stages of flight—take- offs and landings. The run-way at the Naples airport runs exactly NE to SW. Most of the time, the prevailing wind blows in from the sea—that is, from the SW; thus, planes usually take off into that wind and climb out steep over the city to avoid disturbing the folks below as much as possible. They then land from the NW over the less populated areas of Naples to the north-west of the airport. But—recent winds have been from the north and north-west, requiring take-offs in the other direction, which bother no one, but landings in from the sea over the city. The angle of descent on final approach has to be a gentle as possible for the good folks in the cabin; thus, you have flights coming in low over the city. Some day the winds will change and things will be back to normal.

—Once upon a time there was the Italsider steel mill in Bagnoli. That was closed in preparation for whatever the future might hold for the area—beaches, boat harbors, and happy peasants serving the jet set, so they say. The premises of the steel mill, however—the actual earth beneath the mills—are so permeated with poisonous substances (of the category Cer 170503, in the Europe-wide system of classifying such waste) that nothing can be done with the area until that material is removed. Thus, 10,000 tons of it are in the process of being collected and shipped to the industrial town of Moerdijk in the Netherlands, a place that apparently has a pyrolysis plant—that is, a unit that can detoxify the material by heating. Remind me not to move to Moerdijk.

—The final 19 km (12 miles) of track for the high-speed train connection between Naples and Rome are now complete and have been officially opened in the presence of Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano. That doesn't mean you can ride on those tracks yet; that won't happen until mid-December. The high-speed link over much of the stretch has been in use since December, 2005, but the completed link between Naples and Rome will cut travel time to 70 minutes, an improvement over the good old days (around 1930) when, as one elderly gentleman assures me, it was an all-nighter sleeping car affair.

—The San Paolo stadium, home field for the Naples football/soccer team, is in such terrible shape that the city is trying to sell it to anyone who will pay for the upkeep. The stadium was massively renovated in 1990 for the World Cup games played in Naples and has been going downhill ever since. The city is tired of spending 5 to 6 million euros a year: the bleachers are in bad shape, plaster is crumbling, locker rooms and tunnels leak—all of that and more.