Naples, the capital of pizza. Our short trip had a lasting impact. The food – enough said. I thought that I had enough self discipline to stop myself when I was full…until I went to Naples.

I wanted to grab your attention with a sexy photo of Napolean pizza, did it work? Now that I have your attention, while the pizza is fantastic, I want to step away from writing a post about the delicious food and “spice” (get it?!) things up a bit.

When we were in Naples, I kept seeing these things that looked like red chiles. I figured since it is a food capital, red chiles would make sense. But, I kept seeing them everywhere and thought that maybe I should get one since they looked cool. So I stepped up closer and saw that in fact, it was not red chiles at all.

These red chile looking things are actually called, Corno, a horn in English. The red corno is designed to ward off any Evil Eye and bring good luck to an individual or a home. I guess it is somewhat similar to that of a rabbits foot in Native American traditions. If you look carefully enough, there is a little figure on top of these cornos that is called Pulcinella. He is a masked prankster who is part of traditional Napoli folklore dating back centuries ago. He is determined to be the unofficial mascot of Napoli, representing the working class of the medieval period. In old theater, he was often a puppet who characterized a prankster that seemed ignorant of his actions.

 I’m giving you a little homework now, google Corno e Pulcinella and see what it looks like.

Have you ever seen these before?