A ghost hovers over her Naples. Not the Camorra, masterfully singled out by storyteller-reporter Roberto Saviano (author of the acclaimed Gomorrah). Nor Vesuvius, whose last major eruption in March 1944, in the midst of the Allied advance to the north, claimed the lives of 26 civilians and also destroyed four villages.

This is a ghost that walks through the narrow streets with linen laid out, you see it on the walls, even in the iconostasis. You stumble upon him in figurative graffiti (“murals”) in the city’s Spanish Quarter, above the central Via Toledo. Everything gives out an element, which is not only an element, but also a deity. In Naples Diego Maradona he never died.

A deity, yes, but “dirty” like the city he made his own (the mafia and garbage in Naples are separate chapters in the history of the city). He himself recognized the “hand of God” at the 1986 World Cup (“what hand of God? It was Diego’s hand, and I’m glad we brought it to the British!”). It was the absolute seal of this “dirty god” as he was described.

From the lanes of the historic center to the sea and the San Carlo Theatre, the legendary opera not only of the city, but also of the world’s lyrical theater, the face of Maradona rushes by. But where he knows, the apotheosis is high up in the sotiks of the Spanish Quarter, at the foot of the upper city with a fantastic view. In these streets, between fish markets with local osteria and hanging meat from butchers who constantly wash them with lemon water, there are places where you think you’ve returned to Malaparte’s dental Naples, the enthusiastic but also heartbreaking “Derma” or the diary “Naples “44” by Norman Lewis or also in “Gallery” by John Horne Burns, a collection of narrative portraits of the city at a time when the locals ate all the tropical fish in the local aquarium to satisfy their hunger, with the tasteless prostitution of women, children and men, with gynecologists who make a living performing hymen surgeries. Passing through Naples as soldiers, Burns and Lewis (and the great Malaparte as military liaison) captured a city that, despite its impoverishment, was full of life, with a peculiar Mediterranean surrealism, an explosive mixture of extreme contradictions, full of rare phantasmagoria and grotesque theater of people and animals.

In a sense, Maradona harmoniously fit into this terrifying motley palimpsest of the city and time. A city with a pronounced, I would say, physical character. Not far from Naples (an hour by bus), in the only ancient ashen state, Pompeii, above the single beds of the “sin” of the famous “lupanars” (brothels) one can see the much-discussed “fresh” with an erotic attitude (after careful research, archaeologists have come to the conclusion that lupanars offered normal sexual intercourse, pelechia and cunnilingus, active and passive anal sex for a fee). The orgiastic character of the region knows its apotheosis in gastronomy, but also in music: there is nothing picturesque about traditional tarantellas, they are furious dances performed by eerie voices full of ecstatic rhythms. The pagan remains in a place where otherwise the bodies of saints are exposed, not only inside imposing churches.

From the lanes of the historic center down to the sea and the theater of San Carlo, the shape of Diego flies.

When, in 1495, syphilis came to Europe on Columbus’ caravels returning from the New World, the then unprecedented disease was very quickly called the “Neapolitan disease”: in the port of the city, the sailors began to sigh. Feelings rage “around Naples”, but also within it. And together with feelings and art: In the 17th century, together with Venice, Naples was the capital of music, the city that gave birth to the (barbaric) custom of “castrates” (eunuchs-lyricists-performers, whose voices are now performed by countertenors), the city that gave rise to comedy dell’arte, who gave birth to the composer Nicolas Porpora and passed through the great composer Alessandro Scarlatti, the “senior Crescendo” of Rossini, as well as the artist Artemisia Gentileschi (“the woman-Caravaggio”), the scandalous psychic Eusapia Palladino with explosive, romantic and sensual traditional music, which is being revived today great artists like Cristina Ploujar and bands like Nuova Compania del Canto Popolare.

Maradona is here. He went not to the elegant Italian North, but to the dirty South. It was something of an anecdote: Napoli didn’t have a sewer, but the highest paid player in the world was greeted like a god by a crowd of 75,000 at the São Paulo stadium on July 5, 1984. the team is 15 points behind the pace and is in full swing towards the championship. He “captured” the double from Milan at home in a moment of relaxation, but the bottom line is that the more Napoli advance, the more their world remembers Maradona.

Rumor has it that the Camorra did the work of translating it in 1984, at the very time when the city’s intelligentsia were collecting protest signatures – the city was suffering from fundamental shortcomings, was such extravagant spending possible?

Maradona had it: he declared that he would play for the poor children of Naples, he would take revenge on Rome “and its money.” The rivalry between North and South is in full swing, walking today in the historic center of Naples, you see toilet paper in tourist shops with the faces of politicians and groups photographed on it: the Roma emblem stands out …

In 2000, Maradona confessed to being addicted to cocaine. What about this? The Neapolitans will not stop worshiping him. When he died at the age of 60 in November 2020, the club renamed its home stadium “Estadio Diego Armando Maradona”.

It was Vesuvius. He made Naples headlines, fell out with the Pope over the luxury he saw in the Vatican, snorted cocaine and spread exogamy. He was a hedonist in the tradition of Neapolitan, Roman and Italian hedonism combined. A sensualist who did not want to be an example for anyone, but to live exactly the way he wanted. Such is Naples – until now. This is not a role model for many, but the city lives exactly the way it wants to.