The Rothschilds in Naples

Abstract

The Rothschild bank in Naples was founded following the Restoration of 1815, and thereafter played a major role in the financial affairs of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and other Italian states until Italy’s Unification after which its operations were transferred to Turin and Rome in 1863. This article examines the career of Karl Rothschild and his son Adolphe in Naples, and describes their close contacts with the Neapolitan government, their intervention to finance the return of Pope Plus IX to Rome following the revolution of 1848–9, and their financial dealings with Cavour and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Savoy in the early 1850s. As well as contacts with the parent Rothschild banking operations in Frankfurt and London, the article examines the Rothschilds’ relations with other foreign and local bankers in Naples. It also explores their role in Neapolitan society and their role in the re-establishment of the Jewish community in Naples in 1830, which they continued to watch with interest long after the family’s banking interests in the city had been wound up.     

Liberation and literature: Naples 1944

The arrival of Anglo‐American forces in Naples on 1 October 1943 precipitated the structural crisis which had beset the capital of the south since its integration into the Italian nation‐state in 1860. This crisis had been masked by the reassuringly engaging ethos of napoletanità, encoded in the urban dialect and crystallized in its literary culture from Matilde Serao and Salvatore Di Giacomo onwards. The myth of napoletanità had been frozen under Fascism, but was shattered by the experience of the war years and after, and only factitiously restored under the political hegemony of the monarchist ship owner Achille Lauro during the 1950s. Young literary Americans such as John Home Burns and William Weaver, who found themselves in Naples with the occupying Allied forces, fell under its spell, while the equally young British military intelligence officer Norman Lewis maintained a detached, but sympathetic, objectivity. The older Tuscan writer, Curzio Malaparte, so provocatively transformed the image of Naples as to earn furious rejection by the city's dominant postwar political circles and by Italy's literary circles. Yet, despite brilliant attempts at restoration by the departed Neapolitan, Giuseppe Marotta, and the much‐loved actor‐playwright Eduardo De Filippo, napoletanità was systematically undermined and demolished by younger Neapolitan writers from Domenico Rea and Anna Maria Ortese to Raffaele La Capria as the city's urban fabric was transformed by appallingly irresponsible property speculators. This article focuses on the literary anthropology of Naples in the 1940s. It explores literary texts and contexts, and the way they problematize Naples as a unified subject or object. It addresses the paradoxical issue of the city's need for liberation from itself, and the time scale of a liberation that perhaps has always been and always will be in fieri.     

The emerald and gold necklace from Oplontis,Vesuvian Area,Naples, Italy

The present study refers to the characterization of an emerald and gold necklace, dating from the first century AD, found in Oplontis (Torre Annunziata, Naples, Italy), using non-destructive methodologies such as EPMA and microFTIR. Reference samples, from mines known to be active in the Roman Imperial period, were collected and analyzed using the same techniques. Experimental data were also statistically treated in order to classify the emeralds' mines. The comparison of archaeological and reference data allowed to hypothesize, with high probability, an Egyptian origin for the Oplontis emeralds – even if the Habachtal mine cannot be definitively excluded.     

The politics of town planning in post-war Naples

The article examines town planning in the city of Naples since the war and, in ­particular, the ambiguous relations between politicians and policy. The focus of the analysis highlights the failure to give effect to the various master plans (PRG) ­discussed and sometimes adopted by the city authorities. This explains to a large extent the widespread building speculation that occurred in these years.     

从远古走来的藏羚羊--结识雪域生灵系列之二

从可可西里到羌塘高原,是一个巨大的野生动物王国。栖息着30多种青藏高原特有的珍稀动物。其中以藏羚的家族最为繁茂。二十余年前,是藏羚的鼎盛期,这里曾生存着十万只以上的藏羚。它们在蓝天白云之下,在无垠的荒原上自由地觅食,生生不息。藏羚,俗称藏羚羊,属中型牛科动物。体形高大健美,皮毛色泽淡雅,一双大眼明亮温柔。雄羚有一对长约60厘米的角,两角长得一模一样,质地坚实如铁,似两把有环棱的黑色宝剑。侧面看时,两角合为一角,因此,自古藏羚又名“独角兽”。最为奇特的是鼻翼根部和腋窝生有囊状物,也叫风袋。藏羚奔跑时,风袋能鼓起,使藏羚…