Spaghetti alla puttanesca

Quick and easy southern Italian pasta dish has a colourful history

Spaghetti alla puttanesca is a tasty dish
that is easy to cook at home

The distinctive aroma and piquant taste of a puttanesca sauce is something I always associate with Naples. It somehow evokes the atmosphere of the city for me because you enjoy the enticing smell of tomatoes and olives cooked in garlic as you pass restaurants hidden behind unobtrusive doors in the narrow streets in the centre.  

There are various theories about how the sauce, which can be served with either spaghetti or linguine, acquired its name. Puttana is the Italian word for prostitute, so it means literally, spaghetti cooked ‘in the style of the prostitute.’

People have speculated that the dish could have been invented to lure men into houses of ill repute, to be served to them while they waited their turn. Or, the prostitutes may have cooked it to eat themselves, because it was quick and easy to make.

Another version is that pasta cooked alla puttanesca was convenient for married women to make so that they could spend less time in the kitchen and more time with their Neapolitan lovers.

The sauce began to crop up on restaurant menus under various names in the 19th century and the ingredients would vary slightly, according to the area of Italy.

There was a reference to the dish in a 1960s Italian novel when one of the characters says: ‘Spaghetti alla puttanesca, like they make in Siricusa’. In Sicily, the sauce is referred to as spaghetti alla siciliana and has green peppers added to it.

Most Neapolitan cookery books do not suggest adding anchovies to the sauce, but In Lazio, where they also claim it as their own, puttanesca sauce contains chopped anchovies.

It has also been claimed the sauce was invented at a restaurant on the island of Ischia out in the bay of Naples. A group of customers arrived late in the evening when the restaurant had practically run out of ingredients. The customers asked the owner just to give them what he had left, so he quickly made a sauce using four tomatoes, two olives and some capers and garlic, to serve with their spaghetti.

You can use either fresh or tinned tomatoes to make spaghetti alla puttanesca. If you want to make the Neapolitan version, you should fry some garlic in olive oil, add the tomatoes, capers, black olives, and parsley and let it simmer for about ten minutes while the spaghetti is cooking. 

I sometimes add a couple of chopped anchovies and a pinch of dried oregano to it, just because I enjoy the taste. Buon appetito!

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Villa Tritone Sorrento

When philosopher Benedetto Croce stayed in Sorrento

A plaque on the exterior wall of Villa Tritone in Sorrento records the residence there during World War II of the philosopher Benedetto Croce using the words  ‘quando l’Italia era tagliata in due'  (when Italy was cut in two).

This refers to a difficult period in Italian history during the second world war when the Germans were retreating from the Allies northwards up the peninsula and trying to do as much damage as possible on their way.

Benedetto Croce was one of the most important figures in Italian life and culture in the first half of the 20th century. He was an idealist philosopher, historian and erudite literary scholar whose approach to literature influenced future generations of writers and literary critics. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 16 times.

Croce became a Senator in 1910 and was Minister for Education from 1920 to 1921 in the last pre-Fascist government of the so-called Giolitti era. He is also remembered for his major contribution to the rebirth of Italian democracy after World War II.

Croce kept a diary during the war entitled ‘Quando l’Italia era tagliato in due'.

He made daily entries in this diary between July1943 and June 1944 after he had left his home in Naples, Palazzo Filomarino della Rocca, and gone to Sorrento to escape the Allied air raids.

He was staying in the Villa Tritone, a stunning clifftop residence in Via Marina Grande overlooking the sea.

A view from the sea shows the imposing Villa Tritone
perched on the cliff to the left of Marina Grande

The Germans entered and occupied Naples during September and on 12 September the Germans rescued Mussolini from his prison on Gran Sasso in the mountains of Abruzzo with a glider-borne team.

On 13 September Croce writes that he has been receiving anonymous threats. The following day he reports that there were lots of Fascists roaming the streets of Sorrento.

He is advised to leave the Villa Tritone immediately to avoid being taken hostage by fascists who would use him for propaganda purposes.

The next day’s entry was written by him on Capri. Croce reports that a floating mine was found in the sea below the Villa Tritone and it was thought the retreating Germans might have been planning to come and take him as they had taken other prominent Italians in Salerno.

A motorboat was sent for him and his daughters from Capri, which was at the time firmly in Allied hands. The family were able to use the stairs that led from Villa Tritone down to the beach to get away. On board were a police commissioner from Capri and an English army officer who had been tasked with rescuing him. 

The boat returned to Sorrento later to collect Croce’s wife and another of his daughters who had stayed behind to pack up their possessions. On board were the same police commissioner and a Major Munthe, the son of Axel Munthe,  the Swedish doctor who had been a Capri resident for much of his life and who wrote a best-selling memoir entitled The Story of San Michele.

The Fascist and German radio stations broadcast that ‘Croce and others’ were to be severely punished, but the Allies were able to counter this by broadcasting that the philosopher was now safely on Capri.

The entrance to Villa Tritone on Via Marina Grande

History of the Villa Tritone

A villa had been built on the site of the present day Villa Tritone in the first century AD by Agrippa Postumus, grandson of Emperor Augustus, and Ovid was said to have been a frequent visitor there.

This became the site of a convent in the 13th century and then the land was purchased in the 19th century by Count Labonia and the present villa was built.

At the beginning of the 20th century William Waldorf Astor bought the villa and designed the garden behind it, which is screened by trees and has windows cut in the high wall on the seaward side that give views of the sea and Vesuvius across the bay.

Croce’s life story

Benedetto Croce was born on 25 February in 1866 in Pescasseroli, a small town in the region of Abruzzo, into a wealthy family. He was raised in a strict Catholic environment but from the age of 16 he gave up Catholicism and developed a personal philosophy of spiritual life.

In 1883, while he was still a teenager, he was on holiday with his family on the island of Ischia when an earthquake struck Casamicciola and destroyed the house they were staying in. His mother, father and sister were all killed, but although he was buried for a long time, he managed to survive.

He inherited his family’s fortune and was able to live a life of leisure, devoting his time to philosophy and writing while living in a palazzo in Naples. His ideas began to be publicised at the University of Rome by Professor Antonio Labriola.

Benedetto Croce was one of the foremost
intellectuals of 20th century Italy

After his appointment to the Senate, Croce was a critic of Italy’s involvement in World War I. He left Government office about a year before Benito Mussolini assumed power.

In 1923, Croce was instrumental in relocating the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III to the Palazzo Reale in Naples.

After Giacomo Matteotti was assassinated by the Fascists in 1924, Croce was one of the signatories to the manifesto of the anti-Fascist intellectuals and he provided financial support to anti-Fascist writers.

His home and library in Naples were ransacked by the Fascists in 1926 and he was put under surveillance. No mainstream newspaper or academic publication was allowed to refer to him.

When democracy was restored in Italy in 1944, Croce became a minister in the governments of Pietro Badoglio and Ivanoe Bonomi.

He voted for the Monarchy in the Constitutional referendum in 1946. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly that existed until 1948 but he declined to stand as provisional president of Italy.

Croce’s philosophical ideas were expressed in more than 80 books and 40 years worth of articles in his own literary magazine, La Critica. His theories were later debated by many Italian philosophers, including Umberto Eco.

Croce was President of PEN International, the worldwide writer’s association, from 1949 until his death in Naples in 1952.

His wife and daughters established the Fondazione Biblioteca Benedetto Croce in Palazzo Filomarino della Rocca in Naples in 1955. The street on which the palazzo stands is now named Via Benedetto Croce.

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Sorrento lift

Let the lift from the port do the hard work for you

The long, tiring climb uphill from the port or beach is a thing of the past for Sorrento visitors and residents.

Sign for the lift in
 Villa Communale

Two lifts now connect the centre of town with Marina Piccola and the nearby beaches.

Travellers returning from a day trip to Capri, Ischia or Naples can be whisked up from the port to Piazza Gargiulo in the Villa Communale in 20 seconds.
From there it is just a few minutes walk to Piazza Tasso and the shops, bars, restaurants and hotels in the centre of the resort.
A single trip costs 1 euro but you can also buy a return ticket for 1.80. Between May and September the lift runs from 7.30 in the morning till midnight. For more information visit www.sorrentolift.it.

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Take a trip across the water to Ischia

Castello Arogonese guards over Ischia

A view of the island of Ischia suddenly appears out in the bay as you travel out of Sorrento along the peninsula in the direction of Massa Lubrense, following the curve of the coastline.

On a clear day, you will be able to see this large, volcanic island from various panoramic points around Capo di Sorrento. Ischia appears triangular in shape, topped by Monte Epomeo, along whose slopes the grapes for the island’s excellent wines are grown.

At night if you look out to sea from the area around Capo you will be able to make out the shape of the island picked out by the lights glittering on it.

There is a daily aliscafo (hydrofoil) service to the island from Marina Piccola in Sorrento . It departs at 9.30 in the morning and leaves Ischia to return to Sorrento at 17.20.

It is well worth a trip out to the island to see the Castello Arogonese, which was built on a rock just off the island, the gardens of La Mortella, where English composer William Walton used to live, and the pretty beach resorts of Casamicciola Terme, Lacco Ameno and Forio.

You will land at Ischia Porto where you will see buses waiting to take you to different parts of the island. The Castello is within walking distance of the port but you will need transport to take you any further afield.

There are some lovely beaches and you will find plenty of good quality restaurants where you can enjoy the local specialties and wines produced on the island.

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