Unthinkable Happens in Unlivable Naples

APLES, Italy -- The question being tested here under the volcano is whether, beginning with one world-important and summer-scorched weekend in July, it is possible to hew order from the chaos called Naples. Will the leaders of the world's seven richest nations find a historic and beautiful city that is belatedly recovering its health and pride? Or will they see hasty makeup caking an urban corpse as the setting for their Group of Seven meeting this weekend? Reform Naples? "O sole mio." What a joke. It would be easier to stay the tide. But don't laugh too hard. Overdue change is afoot in Italy's messiest metropolis of 1.2 million. Reforms are being launched, and some serious people are taking them seriously. "I have begun to stop for red lights," said Tullio Pironti, the city's last remaining book publisher. "I used to feel stupid if I stopped, because nobody else did." Whether this sudden modernization will outlast the international gathering is the real question. The Italian government, the Secret Service and Neapolitans themselves will make sure their seven guests see no trace of it, but there is an everlasting seamy side of NaplesNaples' throbbing streets are home to a nasty branch of organized crime called the Camorra, and support some of Europe's highest official unemployment and worst civic services. Neapolitans agree that their city is ungovernable and unlivable, but 78 percent tell pollsters they would never leave. Naples is a madhouse in which nothing ever works; a stress-and-angst factory in which suicide is almost unknown. Naples may even seem quite magical from the Hotel Vesuvio at the heart of a newly coiffed city core, where the G-7 participants will live and meet for three days beginning Friday. The security and the fresh paint are symptomatic: What a difference a year can make! Last summer, Naples touched bottom, befouled and overwhelmed by corruption and decay. Uncollected garbage festered, few traffic lights worked, potholes swallowed roads, the water was brown, the city government was not paying its bills. Change began Aug. 6, 1993, when Prefect Umberto Improta, the Italian government's senior representative in Naples, dissolved the feuding, corrupt and inept city government to remedy what he deemed a lack of public order. Together with leftist politician Antonio Bassolino, who defeated neo-fascist Alessandra Mussolini in Naples' mayoral election, and $35 million from central and regional governments, Improta has begun stitching the southern metropolis back together. The Piazza del Plebiscito and the Via San Carlo have been redone and antiqued to restore them to the way they looked in the early 19th century when Naples, home of a ruling Spanish king, stood with Paris and London in the front rank of European capitals. "Everybody is interested in making the city look good," Bassolino said in an interview. "For G-7, Naples wants to prove itself to the world."