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Street Fight in Naples: A City's Unseen History
A journey through the history, culture and mean streets of Naples by the acclaimed bestselling author of Midnight in Sicily and M, Peter Robb.
Naples is always a shock, flaunting beauty and squalor like nowhere else. Naples is the only city in Europe whose ancient past still lives in its irrepressible people. Their ancestors came from all over the early Mediterranean to the wide bay and its islands, shadowed by a dormant volcano. Not all of them found what they were looking for, but they made a great and terribly human city. Peter Robb's Street Fight in Naples ranges across nearly three thousand years of Neapolitan life and art, from the first Greeklandings in Italy to his own less auspicious arrival thirty-something years ago.
In 1503 Naples became the Mediterranean capital of Spain's world empire and the base for the Christian struggle with Islam. It was a European metropolis matched only by Paris and Istanbul, an extraordinary concentration of military power, lavish consumption, poverty and desperation. As the occupying empire went into crisis, exhausted by its wars against Islamists in the Mediterranean and Protestants in the North, the people of Naples paid a dreadful price.
Naples was where in 1606 the greatest painter of his age fled from Rome after a fatal street fight. Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio found in its teeming streets an image of the age's crisis, and released among the painters of Naples the energies of a great age in European art - until everything erupted in a revolt by the dispossessed, and the people of an occupied city brought Europe into the modern world.
Naples is always a shock, flaunting beauty and squalor like nowhere else. Naples is the only city in Europe whose ancient past still lives in its irrepressible people. Their ancestors came from all over the early Mediterranean to the wide bay and its islands, shadowed by a dormant volcano. Not all of them found what they were looking for, but they made a great and terribly human city. Peter Robb's Street Fight in Naples ranges across nearly three thousand years of Neapolitan life and art, from the first Greeklandings in Italy to his own less auspicious arrival thirty-something years ago.
In 1503 Naples became the Mediterranean capital of Spain's world empire and the base for the Christian struggle with Islam. It was a European metropolis matched only by Paris and Istanbul, an extraordinary concentration of military power, lavish consumption, poverty and desperation. As the occupying empire went into crisis, exhausted by its wars against Islamists in the Mediterranean and Protestants in the North, the people of Naples paid a dreadful price.
Naples was where in 1606 the greatest painter of his age fled from Rome after a fatal street fight. Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio found in its teeming streets an image of the age's crisis, and released among the painters of Naples the energies of a great age in European art - until everything erupted in a revolt by the dispossessed, and the people of an occupied city brought Europe into the modern world.
Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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About the author
Peter Robb
30 books42 followersBorn 1946. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Robb
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 23, 2019
Peter Robb is a unique voice in Australian letters. From his first book Midnight in Sicily, he has delved into odd corners of the murkier side of human nature by looking at art, food, and the other vices that beset us. From the title it's obvious that this work's focus is that Queen of Cities, Naples. Robb lived there for many years although it was only after he returned to his native country that he could write this book, which in true Robb fashion combines his own memories with snippets of history and speculation to create a great work of literature.
As it is for the rest of Robb's oeuvre, it is hard to briefly describe this book . A type of history, mostly of Spanish Naples; a critique of Neapolitan artists both famous and less so; with the climax a retelling of the rebellion led by Masaniello in 1647. The book is much more than this, all anchored by Robb's reflections on his own experiences from his time there.
What Robb is really writing about is human nature, and the character of the Neapolitans themselves: ever-adaptable; proud; foolish; and violent. Robb describes how the painters of the seventeenth century not only were daring in their use of the poor as subjects for their religious paintings, but that they also resorted to threats, violence and perhaps even murder to ensure that no outsiders came in and took commissions away from them and their studios.
The natural beauty of the city and its surrounds barely hides the squalor of many of its inhabitant's existence, something that has not changed for millennia. Another constant is outside control of the city: Greeks, Romans, Normans, Spanish, French have lorded it over the city and surrounds, and even the Italian State at times is seen as an occupying power. Naples has rarely been master of its own destiny, except for brief periods of rebellion, which were mostly crushed within a short period of their outbreak.
Robb however is uninterested in giving the reader a mere narrative history. As is often the case in his work, he explains by allusion and side-tracks: we may learn the history of fishing in the Bay of Naples through his description of a painting of the marketplace, or the legend of the founding of the city via his description of a sweaty train journey to a popular beach. The reader can never be sure in Robb's work just where he's leading, or what might be imparted by the end of the book.
It is this style of exposition, and the exact choice of words used to "expose" (I use the word deliberately), that makes Robb a unique writer. While I love his work (even his lighter-weight magazine pieces are great), I can readily understand why some people may find his work wordy, obtuse and almost deliberately obscure.
I think that, to Robb, the way he layers these stories and snippets is how he feels he can get to the real kernel of what Naples is, now and 350 years ago. The way he juxtaposes his subjects shows how much has stayed the same even in the midst of revolutionary change. The reader's mind is drawn into this web of stories - as labyrinthine as the streets of Naples themselves - and is never sure whether what is being discussed is an historical event or a painting; something that happened in 1400, 1647, or 1980. But it doesn't matter, as it is one story, of a city and that city's people.
There is no doubt that Robb has a deep and abiding love for Naples, even as he shows us the corruption and venality of those who have governed it. He also has a deep respect and affection for the workers and peasants, even as he acknowledges their vices and foolishness.
Like Midnight in Sicily and A Death in Brazil, Street fight in Naples is a work of massive craftsmanship, created by a unique mind.
This rather pedestrian review does it no justice whatsoever.
Highly Recommended
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
As it is for the rest of Robb's oeuvre, it is hard to briefly describe this book . A type of history, mostly of Spanish Naples; a critique of Neapolitan artists both famous and less so; with the climax a retelling of the rebellion led by Masaniello in 1647. The book is much more than this, all anchored by Robb's reflections on his own experiences from his time there.
What Robb is really writing about is human nature, and the character of the Neapolitans themselves: ever-adaptable; proud; foolish; and violent. Robb describes how the painters of the seventeenth century not only were daring in their use of the poor as subjects for their religious paintings, but that they also resorted to threats, violence and perhaps even murder to ensure that no outsiders came in and took commissions away from them and their studios.
The natural beauty of the city and its surrounds barely hides the squalor of many of its inhabitant's existence, something that has not changed for millennia. Another constant is outside control of the city: Greeks, Romans, Normans, Spanish, French have lorded it over the city and surrounds, and even the Italian State at times is seen as an occupying power. Naples has rarely been master of its own destiny, except for brief periods of rebellion, which were mostly crushed within a short period of their outbreak.
Robb however is uninterested in giving the reader a mere narrative history. As is often the case in his work, he explains by allusion and side-tracks: we may learn the history of fishing in the Bay of Naples through his description of a painting of the marketplace, or the legend of the founding of the city via his description of a sweaty train journey to a popular beach. The reader can never be sure in Robb's work just where he's leading, or what might be imparted by the end of the book.
It is this style of exposition, and the exact choice of words used to "expose" (I use the word deliberately), that makes Robb a unique writer. While I love his work (even his lighter-weight magazine pieces are great), I can readily understand why some people may find his work wordy, obtuse and almost deliberately obscure.
I think that, to Robb, the way he layers these stories and snippets is how he feels he can get to the real kernel of what Naples is, now and 350 years ago. The way he juxtaposes his subjects shows how much has stayed the same even in the midst of revolutionary change. The reader's mind is drawn into this web of stories - as labyrinthine as the streets of Naples themselves - and is never sure whether what is being discussed is an historical event or a painting; something that happened in 1400, 1647, or 1980. But it doesn't matter, as it is one story, of a city and that city's people.
There is no doubt that Robb has a deep and abiding love for Naples, even as he shows us the corruption and venality of those who have governed it. He also has a deep respect and affection for the workers and peasants, even as he acknowledges their vices and foolishness.
Like Midnight in Sicily and A Death in Brazil, Street fight in Naples is a work of massive craftsmanship, created by a unique mind.
This rather pedestrian review does it no justice whatsoever.
Highly Recommended
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
January 3, 2026
'If you're heading for Sicily this autumn, Peter Robb's masterpiece Midnight in Sicily is de rigueur. If Naples and environs is your goal, you may be better off saving this extraordinary work until you get back. The muscular exuberance of Robb's style – one of the finest in contemporary English – is perfectly suited to Neapolitan brio but the central topic of this book is the art of the 16th century.
'His cast includes artists like Ribera, who painted a bearded lady, Artemisia Gentileschi, whose rape by her uncle underlies a vigorously realistic depiction of Judith hacking off the head of Holofernes, and Caracciolo, whose Earthly Trinity was unforgettably influenced by Robb's hero Caravaggio. Since the book's eight small colour reproductions are of negligible value, you need Google for illustration purposes. To appreciate the linking theme of Midnight in Sicily, which is food, all you need do in Sicily is open your mouth. Though Robb focuses on Naples's unhappy spell as a colony of the skint Spanish when violence and corruption was even more prevalent than usual – the "street fight" of the title could refer to any number of grisly encounters – he reaches back to its mystical founding when the siren Parthenope expired on the rocks of Santa Lucia and forward to his spell as a long-term resident in the Seventies.
'Now returned to his native Sydney, Robb is exiled from his exile. His evocative memories are strictly rationed, though a hint of gastronomic passion emerges in a description of Pignasecca market: "People on foot had to dodge not only vehicles but the tubs of fish and the squirting hoses with which he sea creatures were refreshed. Sometimes an octopus briefly slithered free among the wheels and heels."
'Robb's exploration of this tumultuous city, simultaneously sun-blasted and dungeon-dark, is episodic rather than chronological. Among appearances by Cinderella, Virgil and the rebel priest Giordano Bruno, a herd of sheep drifts in and out of the latter pages. Though occasionally bemused, you keep reading, swept along by a tidal prose.'
[From: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...]
'His cast includes artists like Ribera, who painted a bearded lady, Artemisia Gentileschi, whose rape by her uncle underlies a vigorously realistic depiction of Judith hacking off the head of Holofernes, and Caracciolo, whose Earthly Trinity was unforgettably influenced by Robb's hero Caravaggio. Since the book's eight small colour reproductions are of negligible value, you need Google for illustration purposes. To appreciate the linking theme of Midnight in Sicily, which is food, all you need do in Sicily is open your mouth. Though Robb focuses on Naples's unhappy spell as a colony of the skint Spanish when violence and corruption was even more prevalent than usual – the "street fight" of the title could refer to any number of grisly encounters – he reaches back to its mystical founding when the siren Parthenope expired on the rocks of Santa Lucia and forward to his spell as a long-term resident in the Seventies.
'Now returned to his native Sydney, Robb is exiled from his exile. His evocative memories are strictly rationed, though a hint of gastronomic passion emerges in a description of Pignasecca market: "People on foot had to dodge not only vehicles but the tubs of fish and the squirting hoses with which he sea creatures were refreshed. Sometimes an octopus briefly slithered free among the wheels and heels."
'Robb's exploration of this tumultuous city, simultaneously sun-blasted and dungeon-dark, is episodic rather than chronological. Among appearances by Cinderella, Virgil and the rebel priest Giordano Bruno, a herd of sheep drifts in and out of the latter pages. Though occasionally bemused, you keep reading, swept along by a tidal prose.'
[From: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...]
December 5, 2012
A fascinating collage of ancient stories and images with modern extensions and perspectives. Little known artists are intermingled with better known Masters and their various interconnections throughout the power centres and religious intrigues of the centuries. If history had have been like this when I was at school I might have paid more attention. Poetry and philosophy also have their part, as does food, which seems to be the centre of all things Italian.
In some ways this seems like a collection of short stories rather than a deep and abiding study of a history through art and politics. Many episodes are lightly told, despite their resonant repercussions. This gives the sense of being able to dip in, much like skimming a coffee table book of images for some light entertainment. Yet the explanations of specific canvases, or frescos, and how they would have developed as a ‘work’ as well as within the life of the artist within the contemporary social circumstances, is fascinatingly educative for events and relationships today, as much as for its historical insights.
Very much enjoyed this journey through the shadows and delights.
In some ways this seems like a collection of short stories rather than a deep and abiding study of a history through art and politics. Many episodes are lightly told, despite their resonant repercussions. This gives the sense of being able to dip in, much like skimming a coffee table book of images for some light entertainment. Yet the explanations of specific canvases, or frescos, and how they would have developed as a ‘work’ as well as within the life of the artist within the contemporary social circumstances, is fascinatingly educative for events and relationships today, as much as for its historical insights.
Very much enjoyed this journey through the shadows and delights.
October 23, 2012
slightly disjointed but Robb writes so well that it's still a good read and made me want to visit Naples (pictures don't work on Kindle, though, so I ended up Googling some of them!)
December 16, 2022
PR is learned, uses that to develop definite views and feels these strongly. this book was an important part of a week i recently spent in naples with my 86-year old mother. it meanders through this great city's history through paintings and artists (my mother does also enjoy a meander). the stories are often exquisite, person after person sparks to life, the lessons regarding our species are chiaroscuro at best. this book could be twinned with the recent television series, 'gomorrah'.
i am a glutton for history, very much including italy and spain (long time bosses of naples). i felt overwhelmed by rich detail at times. but like all good gluttons i will soon hunger for more of robb's historical guidance.
i am a glutton for history, very much including italy and spain (long time bosses of naples). i felt overwhelmed by rich detail at times. but like all good gluttons i will soon hunger for more of robb's historical guidance.
Want to read
May 8, 2013Naples is a city of “moist and exquisitely polluted air”, full of dark alleys illuminated by “blinding knifeblades of light”. Robb brings a painterly eye to his descriptions of the locals in the dark and dank Spanish Quarters area: “sylphlike girls and bountiful breastfeeding mothers hardened and thickened overnight into chunky walking armoured cars with voices like factory hooters” and old widowers “in decent threadbare clothes with a black mourning button on their lapel and living off the smell of an oiled rag”. Teeming Naples is the enthralling setting for Robb’s interweaved stories of mayhem, vice, riots and revolutions. This magical book’s structure is painterly, a dab of information here, another there, in no chronological sequence, while a picture slowly emerges. The spine of the book is Robb’s sensitive treatment of the influence of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio on a series of 17th-century Neapolitan painters, culminating in the relatively unknown Bartolomeo Passante, described by Robb as one of the great visionary painters of the 17th century.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 16, 2023
A slightly disjointed read which I struggled to complete but his understanding of Naples and its history is unsurpassed. Like many before I enjoyed his descriptions of the figures, events and influences which make Naples the gritty and historical centre of southern Italy today The art and historical characters truly resonated as he describes the historical context /background and individual story lines. Some of the initial chapters truly capture the smells, sounds and texture of this fascinating city, which I enjoyed immensely.
January 7, 2025
This is a superb mix , full of Neapolitan flavour, of stories, history and paintings, largely from the seicento, although drawing from Napoli's foundation story as well as the author's own dreamlike experiences of the modern city.
Thoroughly recommended as essential reading before any visit to Napoli : be prepared to look up the many oblique references to people, places, art, books and events referenced as the book is a dense soup of culture which rewards exploration both remotely and in person.
Thoroughly recommended as essential reading before any visit to Napoli : be prepared to look up the many oblique references to people, places, art, books and events referenced as the book is a dense soup of culture which rewards exploration both remotely and in person.
November 5, 2019
Love the historic part, could've done without the description of so many paintings. Read when in Napoli. The contra reformation and Spanish inquisition were pretty shit, Venice sounds great. Will read up on that city's history next.
August 30, 2021
Well informed ramble through Neapolitan art
Detailed study of how baroque art reflects the tumultuous events of sixteenth and seventeenth century Naples, this books shows the deep knowledge of the author but rather misses the essence of Naples.
Detailed study of how baroque art reflects the tumultuous events of sixteenth and seventeenth century Naples, this books shows the deep knowledge of the author but rather misses the essence of Naples.
March 9, 2024
I am now officially crazy about this writer.
June 9, 2025
It was difficult to rate this book. The author is a great art and history scholar who is "merciless" to his reader who is not an art expert 😄
July 6, 2025
Enjoyed this portrait of Naples, but I think it could’ve benefitted from more visuals in the book. Writing is superb, however. Loved the descriptions of the art and violence throughout.
July 21, 2016
Although the book is super interesting and has a lot of lesser known History about Naples, Robb hops around so much that it is hard to keep track of who is who. Also keep the internet close to look up every painting otherwise it is hard to imagine.
November 17, 2024
This is a remarkable book and incredibly well researched. The author vividly describes centuries of Naples' tumultuous history of art, mythology, social and political upheaval, and violent revolution, interspersed with his own anecdotes of living in the city.
May 15, 2019
This was a fabulous book to find (as an Aussie) whilst wandering aimlessly in Naples. I was captivated by the backgrounds of artists and being able to go visit one of the key pieces of this book on my last day!
I will admit it is disjointed; and I couldn’t coherently retell much of the chronology. I also skip all the epilogue stuff and found the gloss pictures in the centre with singular word titles frustrating - only on finishing the book and leading through the front did I see they were referenced. It was more annoying to read the book without consistent internet access to be able to look up works being described - the shortcomings of travel I suppose?
I will admit it is disjointed; and I couldn’t coherently retell much of the chronology. I also skip all the epilogue stuff and found the gloss pictures in the centre with singular word titles frustrating - only on finishing the book and leading through the front did I see they were referenced. It was more annoying to read the book without consistent internet access to be able to look up works being described - the shortcomings of travel I suppose?
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews