The reality of the fiction

 

LUIGI'S COFFEE

In my previous post I talked about looking in Naples for sites linked to the TV crime drama series we'd been watching, Inspector Ricciardi. On the first night we wandered down to the coast, and saw several of the places we'd seen mention of.

The shot above isn't an exact match for that used in that post from a from last month, but it's roughly the same location. There were too many tourists about (including us!) to get the perfect copy. We also saw the Teatro di San Carlo, the opera house shown in the other photo used there. But we didn't go inside, and the exterior is not so photogenic. There were several other locations too, but there's just one I want to talk about.

I'm not sure if it was in every episode, but it was in most. The Gran Caffè Gambrinus was a regular meeting place for the Inspector and his colleagues and acquaintances. An elegant mid 19th century coffee house, which was frequented, on the screen, by the city's wealthier citizens. It's still very much there, still elegant, even if the clientele is often less so (including us!).

The interior is beautiful, the staff smartly dressed and attentive. It feels like a place where the prices wouldbe, should be, high. So it was a surprise to see how reasonable the dishes we selected for lunch were. I had the special salad, and it lived up to the name. Varied leaves, tuna, 2 different kinds of tomato, avocado, olives, sweetcorn, tuna, mozzarella. All for €13. ( Restaurant prices generally were surprisingly reasonable in such a tourist oriented city as Naples.) If there was a sting it was for the coffees - €6 for my decaf espresso, and a steep €8 for Barbara's macchiato. The Inspector was independently wealthy!

Yet entirely worth it for the experience. And a chat with our waiter about the impact Ricciardi had on the cafe itself, both in terms of the filming, and of the resultant surge in interest. We were glad we had gone, and grateful to the series, without which we might not have bothered.

TV dramas are unreliable guides to unfamiliar places. I've seen Edinburgh's geography abused too many times on screen not to be aware of that! But they can give clues to interesting spots to visit, provide backdrops that give the visitor a sense of familiarity when they arrive. Definitely better without the blackshirts though.