Author Elena Ferrante has made a star of Naples in her Neapolitan Quartet. Now you can discover the city for yourself
James Rampton - 9 June 2020
To their legions of fans worldwide, the My Brilliant Friend novels are their brilliant friend. Elena Ferrante’s quartet of books, which have sold an eyewatering ten million copies in 40 countries, have become like a trusted confidante to readers across the globe, inspiring a level of passionate devotion that most novelists would sell their agent for. The reader and My Brilliant Friend enjoy the same preternaturally close relationship as its two protagonists, the lifelong pals Elena “Lenù” Greco and Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo.
However, there is a third principal character in these enchanting books: Naples. The often dishevelled but always captivating city plays a huge part in My Brilliant Friend and the acclaimed TV adaptation, which returns for a second series on Sky Atlantic this week.
As these addictive stories (known as the “Neapolitan Quartet”) follow the twists and turns in Lenù and Lila’s decades-long friendship, this rough-hewn city is never less than magnetic, and you can quite understand why Goethe wrote, “One can’t blame the Neapolitan for never wanting to leave his city.”
After the publication of the first novel in 2012, the city enjoyed a growing number of literary tourists eager to take “Looking for Lenù and Lila” tours. But then Italy, like so much of Europe, was struck by the coronavirus crisis. Now the Italian lockdown has lifted, Ferrante fans can once again return to see first-hand the neighbourhoods so lovingly described in My Brilliant Friend.
DRESS UP FOR A WALK
Although it’s not named, it’s thought that the area where Lenù and Lila grow up is the rundown Rione Luzzatti, by the city’s main railway station. The wealthy Chiaia district, which also figures prominently, is just a short walk away, but it seems like a different world. When she first goes there, Lenù thinks the people “seemed to have breathed another air, to have eaten other food, to have dressed on some other planet, to have learned to walk on wisps of air”. The beating heart of this elegant area is the bustling Piazza dei Martiri, where Lila opens a shoe shop. Here, locals like to show off their bella figura (fine figure) during their evening passeggiata (leisurely stroll), and British visitors stick out like a sore thumb!
VISIT THE SEA GARDEN
In My Brilliant Friend, Lenù slowly starts to explore the Neapolitan waterfront of Mergellina. She and Lila go with their boyfriends to a beach club called Sea Garden on via Francesco Caracciolo near Mergellina. It’s said to have been a haunt of Lord Nelson and his lover Lady Hamilton. Formerly a separate town from Naples, Mergellina is now a thriving marina and port, where you can catch a boat to the coastal islands. It boasts an array of enticing seafront restaurants and has splendid views across the Bay of Naples to Vesuvius. Mergellina is oldschool “Bella Napoli” at its most entrancing.
SEE NAPLES — AND LIVE
Lenù is often to be found browsing in the secondhand bookshops of via Port’Alba in the historic centre of Naples. Ever since the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II opened the first public, non-religious university in the world in Naples in 1224, the city has been a magnet for students. You can find every book you ever wanted – and quite a few you didn’t – in this diverting street that runs from Piazza Dante to Piazza Bellini. It is the sort of vibrant place that prompted the 19th-century English painter Arthur John Strutt to declare, “The Italian proverb says, ‘See Naples and die.’ But I say, see Naples and live; for there seems a great deal worth living for.”
NERO’S THEATRE
The idea of a world simmering below the surface in My Brilliant Friend is first introduced when Lenù and Lila throw their dolls down a drain and then scramble down to investigate Naples’s subterranean realm. It’s believed that the modern city sits on some three million square metres of ancient ruins, of which only ten per cent have been unearthed. You can explore them by taking a Napoli Sotterranea (Naples Underground) tour. The wonders include an ancient theatre where Nero performed. An enthusiastic but appalling singer, the deranged emperor would force audiences to
stay throughout the fingernailsscraping-down-a-blackboard recitals he gave there, obliging some women to give birth in the stalls.
SET FOOT ON ISCHIA
This exquisite, jet-set-y island off the coast of Naples is famous as the place where Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor fell in love while filming Antony and Cleopatra in 1962. Ischia is also the backdrop to two episodes of My Brilliant Friend series two, as Lenù spends a summer coming-of-age there in the 1950s. Situated in the Tyrrhenian Sea in the northern part of the Gulf of Naples, 30km
from the city, volcanic Ischia is the biggest of the Phlegraean Islands. It’s ruggedly mountainous and its houses appear to cascade down the slopes towards the alluring blue water. It’s just one of
many charismatic locations that have helped to create “Ferrante Fever”.
To their legions of fans worldwide, the My Brilliant Friend novels are their brilliant friend. Elena Ferrante’s quartet of books, which have sold an eyewatering ten million copies in 40 countries, have become like a trusted confidante to readers across the globe, inspiring a level of passionate devotion that most novelists would sell their agent for. The reader and My Brilliant Friend enjoy the same preternaturally close relationship as its two protagonists, the lifelong pals Elena “Lenù” Greco and Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo.
However, there is a third principal character in these enchanting books: Naples. The often dishevelled but always captivating city plays a huge part in My Brilliant Friend and the acclaimed TV adaptation, which returns for a second series on Sky Atlantic this week.