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The Phlegraean area with its mild climate, its
fertile fields, its wonderful sea and delightful coasts, its curious
hydrological and volcanic phenomena, its lakes formed in the collapsed
craters and later its ancient ruins, has always attracted people. From the
first people who established here to the travellers who have come here to
see and touch what they have imagined reading their books, a lot of them
came to Italy and wrote inspired by this area.
Among the many visitors who "landed" here during the centuries, such as
Boccaccio and Petrarca, in the seventeenth century, with the
Grand Tour and
particularly with the "Giro of Italy" this area became a favourite place
to visit for foreigners and a lot of British travellers came here
attracted by the Phlegraean Fields. Southern Italy was very popular not
only with British but also with Germans such as Goethe and French such as
Philippe de Mornay. But the British travellers stand out for the quantity
and quality of the books written on their travels in Italy as well as for
their realistic approach. Visitors such as the traveller
William Lithgow
and the English poets Thomas Gray and
Percy Bysshe Shelley furnished
different pictures of their contemporary scene in Italy.
From: “Naples and its Environs”
by G. Capuano and R. Boardman |
