Mergellina

About this audio guide

This guide to Mergellina in Naples opens with the mystery of the district's own name, weighing three competing theories, from a diving duck to Latin for clear water to dredged coral, none of which historians agree on. It then turns to the story Neapolitans actually tell: the siren Parthenope, who sang to sailors from these rocks, poured her voice into seducing Ulysses, and drowned herself in the gulf when he refused her, with legend tying her body to the city's very origin. A block inland, you'll find a second, quieter oddity waiting inside the church of Santa Maria del Parto. Stand where the coastline curves and you're standing at the meeting point of three unresolved arguments about a name.