Posted by Centro Italiano, Italian language schools in Naples

Web site: www.centroitaliano.it

Information about the school
The Italian language school Centro Italiano is located in the heart of the historical centre of Naples, in the University area. Here you will meet friendly people who can help you with accommodation and give you all the information you need for a pleasant stay in Naples.
Throughout the year, the centre offers various kinds of courses to learn Italian in Naples: intensive Italian language group courses, long term course, one-to-one lessons (even in Capri, Ischia and Sorrento), commercial Italian course, Italian cookery and wine courses, art courses (ceramics, Neapolitan crib, literature, archaeology).

NAPLES FROM ABOVE AND BELOW

There are two cities: the one on the surface kissed by the sun and bathed by the sea, and the subterranean one dark and mysterious.
The two cities exist together but often they ignore each other.
Above ground Naples teems with life and light: the Neapolitans chatting, rushing, stopping only for the few minutes it takes to drink a coffee in a bar. This Naples consists of great buildings, antique in the historic center and modern in the hills of Vomero and Posillipo.

The historic center is a legacy treasured by UNESCO for its monuments, its narrow streets, its noble palaces, and for its numerous churches, a heritage to be discovered by the tourist. It’s best to be guided by chance, to walk without a specific destination, encountering portals, small streets, workshops, colonnaded courtyards, cloisters, and museums. Here the Neapolitans live and create; this treasure is their home.
Then all of a sudden in the west the city ends and the sea begins. From Via Caracciolo one admires the Gulf, to the left the Sorrentine Peninsula, to the right the promontory of Posillipo, in the center the islands of Capri, Ischia, and Prochida. One savors the enchantment of a fable.
Naples is also the city of flavors, of excellent cuisine, simple and delectable, of mozzarella, pizza, seafood, and of the famous desserts: babà and sfogliatella to name two.
This Naples is a hymn to life.

The subterranean Naples is in great measure silent and obscure if one excludes the crowded subways that connect the center with the hills and the outskirts. Apart from these subways with their stations filled with art, where one encounters installations of noted contemporary artists, the rest is silent and mysterious.

The silence of the catacomb with its dead and its skulls, is a portent of the cult of the netherworld always alive for the Neapolitan people.
This silent subterranean Naples is made up of caverns and tunnels excavated in the porous rock that for centuries has been the preferred material for constructing palaces and churches. The underground tunnels and galleries used for years as an aqueduct can now be visited in an extraordinary excursion. Finally, there are the archaeological excavations under San Lorenzo and the Cathedral where one can admire the remains of the ancient Roman city.

To visit Naples is thus virtually a Dantean journey from the dark of the underground to the light of the stars.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 4:41 pm and is filed under italian language. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.