145 senses and the city Laundry hanging out to dry. Kitchen smells on Sunday mornings. The hot whiffs of pastry shops and cafes. The putrid water of the fishmongers. Damp dripping under the subway tunnel. The exhaust pipes of aggressive scooters and cars nailed in traffic. Poverty and nobility, in Naples, penetrate you directly from the nostrils, with neither escape nor break in continuity. Obviously the most delicate ones can go and enjoy at the Botanical Garden, or in the woods of Capodimonte and Portici Palaces, but then it's wonderful to get lost. To enter at random in courtyards and gates, perhaps following the trail of ragù just put to pippiare [that is to simmer slowly] or of fried fish. To surrender themselves to the purest olfactory flânerie. Stinks and scents, scents and stinks. For those who like to proceed by smell, among the most interesting routes there are undoubtedly the over two hundred stairs and steps spread in an ancient and complex pedestrian system, in recent times concerned by initiatives such as a specially dedicated Festival, or the regeneration through contemporary art of Montesanto I� [Intelligent �uartier]: projects aiming to redevelop and enhance the so-called vertical city. Thus, fans of urban trekking will have a wide range of possibilities to explore an intimate and true aspect of Naples, breathing in step by step, in addition to the scents flowing from the open windows, that arid scent that gently pulverize the stone and dries the weeds, exacerbating that acrid stink of manure and waste en plein air. Those who have good legs can go up and down between Rampe del Petraio, Pedamentina di San Martino, Moiariello Ascent, Sant'Antonio ai Monti Stairs, Niccolini staircase to Tondo di Capodimonte, Calata San Francesco, Francesco D'Andrea Stairs, Santa Maria Apparente Stairs, Santa Caterina da Siena Ramp, Vico Paradisiello, and if you remember the beautiful and very pregnant Sophia Loren selling contraband cigarettes in Yesterday, today and tomorrow by Vittorio De Sica - Academy Award in 1965 - you might find her at the Giuseppe Piazzi Staircase. Not enough? Some more breath in you? So go and open your lungs in Caracciolo and Partenope Streets, inhaling the mixed smell of iron and saltiness rising from the sea, especially in winter when the wind carries it, along with the splashes, over the cliffs. Then take shelter in your coat and go for a walk between San Gregorio Armeno and San Biagio dei Librai Streets. Cork, incense, mandarins: you see, now it’s Christmas.
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