TAV stands for treni alta velocità—high speed trains. They are common now in many parts of Europe. Considering the time wasted getting to and from airports and being herded around inside of them, travel times by TAVs are competitive for mid-range distances of, say, 500-700 km (300-500 miles). The prices are competitive, too. The Italian TAVs provide service, for example, from Milan to Naples in as little as 4 hours and 10 minutes and from Rome to Naples in 1 hour and 10 minutes. The goal is to span the entire boot of Italy with a high-speed train corridor from Milan to Reggio Calabria. The high-speed corridor is largely complete as far south as Salerno. Crucial to the completion of the network in the south is the planned interchange station at Afragola (image), near the main Naples train station. It will hook northern and southern Italy together, be linked to municipal Naples train services, and also provide easy access to the main north-south autostrada highway. That Afragola transfer station was started about five years ago, but work was interrupted almost immediately for financial reasons. Work is to start again on July 16 and will take 852 days to complete. (When they put the time in days—meaning "working days," so forget Sundays and holidays—it tricks you into not thinking of it as three years!). It will be a high-class "signature" station as they say when a high-class architect is called in—in this case, Iraqi-born futurist Zaha Hadid. She has about 20 completed structures throughout the world, and they are stunning, including, in Italy, the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts in Rome. The Afragola station will cover an area of some 38,000 sq, meters (about 9.3 acres) and include a large park and hotels. A cave for a song!—by which I mean not a place to sing in, but one of the many caves and quarries beneath Naples for 1 euro apiece! In its rush towards the return of feudalism the privatized state, the Italian Agency for Public Economy [Ente Pubblico Economico], formerly the Agency for Public Property [Agenzia del Demanio] has published a list of properties for sale in Italy. Twenty-three of the caves and quarries of Naples are for sale as "ex-air-raid shelters." No one knows why the price is so low, but the local urban spelunkers are outraged that the state is selling off the ground around them. The complete listings for Italy are vast and include old churches, cemeteries, castles, university buildings (the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples is going for just over 8 million euros), and for 17 million euros, you can get the Botanical Gardens of Naples! That's a lot of money; you could get 17 million caves for that.
The board game, Monopoly, was licensed for an Italian version in the 1930s. The names of the squares (the "properties") that you bought and sold have used the traditional names sanctioned by the Fascist regime of that period; thus, instead of "Boardwalk" or "Park Place, you might have "Victory Gate" or "Via Verdi," for example. That is about to change. The 2011 version of Monopoly will feature the names of cities and towns chosen by an internet vote. As is common with this kind of voting, the results were "mobbed" by fans of one place or another, but out of 22 names selected, two local ones made the list: Caserta (in 11th place) and the island of Ischia (9th place). First place went to Chieti, 200 km NE of Rome on the Adriatic. Only two large Italian cities will be on the new Monopoly list of properties: Milano (16th) and Torino (18th). A number of southern Italian towns made the cut, including Reggio Calabria, Messina, and—poetically and justly—in the province of Bari on the southern Adriatic coast, the town of Monopoli, itself!
It took a few years, but I finally managed to stay for a weekend at the Camaldoli monastery. It was a peaceful and pleasant way to beat the sweltering heat and humidity of Naples. I was pleased to see that a new park has been opened just below and to the east of the monastery: the Camaldoli Urban Park. There are plenty of trees, footpaths and even a small amphitheater that overlooks the gulf.
"All hope abandon ye who enter here..."—the sign posted somewhere at Lake Averno—has served well over the centuries to keep busybodies away. The lake came into possession of the Pollio family in 1750 as a gift from the Bourbon king of Naples. They kept it until 1991 when they sold it to a mob boss. Right, the entire lake. The state has now seized the lake and attendant establishments—a farm, a restaurant, and a disco on grounds that it was all acquired with ill-gotten gains and the owner was on the lam, anyway. One of the ill-getters of the ill-gotten says in protest that they had really fixed the lake up. The lake hasn't looked this good since Dante put that sign up.
Mt. Vesuvius National Park is, obviously, centered on the volcano, Mt. Vesuvius. The park is rated as a Category II protected area by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a category reserved for areas designated "national park" within their respective nations. The Vesuvius park was founded in 1995 and covers 7,000 hectares—about 17,000 acres. Within the park there are nine trails or footpaths for visitors; they have a cumulative length of 54 kilometers (33 miles). The administration of the park is housed within the Medici Castle in nearby Ottaviano (photo, right). The castle was originally a medieval fortress from the year 1000, was destroyed in the 1300s, and was transformed into a residence by Bernadetto de' Medici in the 1600s. By the 1990s it had come into the hands of local organized crime. It was seized by the state in the early 1990s and earmarked for the Vesuvius park. In spite of irritating difficulties such as unscheduled closures, strikes and what-not, the park remains a popular tourist attraction.
