Yesterday I thought: either you were great before, or you are now. Goethe seems to have been quite confused in Naples, as these lines reveal. After all, Naples was the largest city he visited in his lifetime, and compared to the loud street life of the Southern Italian metropolis, Rome seemed to him like a cool, quiet place of the North. Naples expert Dieter Richter shares with us Goethe's bewilderment, but also his enthusiasm: about the public character of the people's life with porters, boatmen, fishermen, donkey drivers, and countless children. About the colorful and bizarre forms of Neapolitan folk piety. About the spectacle of the unfamiliar vegetation, the fruits, the landscape, the sea. About the fire-breathing Vesuvius. And finally, about the art, from the ancient monuments to the artists living in Naples.