Salvatore Di Giacomo and his scary stories.
The Tours were born to reconstruct the origins of the detective story in Naples, halfway they veer towards the dark atmospheres of Poe and Hoffmann to present to the fans of a timeless genre the strange season of Salvatore Di Giacomo and his scary stories.
After the journey into the proto-giallo of Mastriani and Serao, after the first two exciting stages between salita Pontecorvo and Monte di Dio, on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 September 2023 (at 10,30:XNUMX am sharp) the Tours of the Giallo conceived and organized by the Festival del Giallo Città di Napoli and included in the great kermesse “Vedi Napoli d'estate e poi torni” promoted by the Department of Tourism of the Municipality of Naples, tackle Neapolitan Gothic starting from the surprising collection of stories by Salvatore Di Giacomo entitled Pipa e Boccale. Together with Ciro Sabatino, curator of the initiative, the singer Francesca Curti Giardina and the actor Diego Consiglio will be present on this journey.
Returning to the unpublished Di Giacomo, the date is 1879. The newspaper of reference is the Corriere del Mattino owned by the Livorno banker Matteo Schilizzi and directed by Martino Cafiero. The city is a Naples that explodes with literary ferment, with writers and journalists determined to confront all the genres that are depopulating half of Europe. Gothic in the lead. With Edgar Allan Poe translated by Baudelaire, ETA Hoffmann who invents the fantastic and horror, and the couple of Alsatian origin Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian who churns out ghost stories and ancient legends without stopping for a moment.
The old continent falls in love with these atmospheres, the very young Salvatore Di Giacomo decides that those suggestions will be his crowbar to realize a dream: to become a writer.
No one could have expected it, but the author of Marechiaro and Assunta Spina, Era de maggio and Spingule francesi began his literary journey among ghosts and mysterious murders, among smoky taverns and scientific laboratories worthy of Stevenson and his unforgettable Doctor Jekyll.
And not in Naples.
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We will, of course, look for him where he moved, where he imagined his six Gothic tales, and where he wrote the first chapter of a genre that was to have a lot to do with Naples in the following years.
“Of course the gathering of the third stage of the Tour del Giallo will once again be a secret entrusted to a mysterious clue”, explains Sabatino, former director of the Festival del Giallo Città di Napoli. "Whoever signs up, whoever decides to listen to our story, will have to prove that they are good at puzzles. Because the Tours are also this: an interactive investigation for mystery enthusiasts."
Linked to the 5 itineraries is the Writing Tour of Giallo Città di Napoli, a literary competition conceived and directed by the journalist Anita Curci (director of the monthly magazine Gialli.it), which is inspired by the origins of the Grand Tour, the custom that led the wealthy European classes, from the seventeenth century onwards, to take tourist trips to improve their knowledge of politics, art, antiquities, habits and customs outside their native borders. The destination was almost always Italy and, naturally, Naples. The legacy received from these "explorations" is of inestimable value and includes travel notebooks, paintings, drawings, memories of various kinds. The examples are many and extraordinary. Among the many, we think of Goethe and his Journey to Italy, of Mary Shelley, who elaborated the drafts of her Frankenstein in Italy, laying the foundations of a new literary genre: the black science fiction novel.
We then thought of linking the extraordinary adventure of the Giallo Tours to the experience of the travel notebook through the themes covered during the literary itineraries where the particular geography of the city linked to crime and mystery will be rediscovered.
Participating in the City of Naples Mystery Writing Tour Contest is easy. Just attend one or more Mystery Tours and let yourself be carried away by emotions and inspiration, imagine stories, jot down notes, create a travel diary (realistic or visionary, as long as it's on topic), and submit it to the Gialli.it editorial staff (redazione@gialli.it) by midnight on December 10, 2023. Entries must be unpublished, never published in print or digitally, and written in diary format. They must be in Italian, with a maximum of 15 pages – 2000 characters per page including spaces – in Times New Roman font, 12 point.
The most intriguing and original notebooks will be published by Gialli.it in a volume available for purchase on Amazon Books and advertised through presentations, reviews and press releases.
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