PRODUCTION // LOCATION // CASTING SERVICES
Sophia has worked on a number of international projects including Netflix, HBO, Rai, Vice, House & Garden, Vogue, The Guardian, Vice, BBC 1, BBC2, BBC4, Wall to Wall, KEO Films, Storyvault providing local production, locations and casting services.
Please see www.sophiaseymour.com for more information.
WALKING TOURS
ORIENTATE YOURSELF IN NAPLES (3HRS)
Experience everything that is not in the guidebook but receive a deep and thorough understanding of what makes the city so enthralling. Meet Sophia for coffee and a brief history of the city and then spend a morning in conversation as you are regaled with Neapolitan myths, mafia stories, history, politics and anecdotes of daily life, providing an understanding of what it means to be Neapolitan. Expect to weave through alleyways laced with laundry, through inconspicuous doorways, meet locals and delve into artisan workshops.
PRIVATE GROUPS ONLY (max 6) 400 EUR
w/coffee and pastries included
Complementary list of Looking for Lila restaurant tips included and available on whatsapp throughout your stay
LITERARY & FOOD WALK: MEET THE ‘MY BRILLIANT FRIEND’ COMMUNITY AND DISCOVER THE NEIGHBOURHOOD (4 hours)
Literary and food walk: Weave through the vivacious and characteristic off-the-beaten track market of Borgo Sant’Antonio to experience community life in its rawest form as described by Elena Ferrante and try local specialities: delve into family run businesses like a the Enzo’s Baccaleria to try raw cod, Antonio’s Fressellaria, and Pasquale’s sign painting workshop, past basso apartments and cigarette contraband for sale. Then cross town to the far more isolated and desolate neighbourhood of Rione Luzzatti where the novels themselves take place. Here, between extracts read out aloud from My Brilliant Friend, you wander through the parish gardens, past the church, the library and into the neighbourhood courtyards and via local establishments. Looking for Lila encourages visitors experience the area as a local, encouraging spontaneous encounters and conversations with residents to get you under the skin of the stories before finally leading you out of the neighbourhood through the infamous tunnel.
PRIVATE GROUPS ONLY (max 6) 400 EUR
w/coffee and pastries included
Complementary list of Looking for Lila restaurant tips included and available on whatsapp throughout your stay
BOOKCLUB LUNCH IN THE HOUSE OF FERRANTE EXPERT AND AUTHOR IN THE RIONE LUZZATTI NEIGHBOURHOOD.
Discuss the works of Ferrante over a three-course lunch of local author and Ferrante expert and author Maurizio Pagano in the Ferrante neighbourhood of Rione Luzzatti to enjoy local delicacies, wine, pastries, limoncello etc.
PRIVATE GROUPS ONLY (max 6) 80 pp EUR
Complementary list of Looking for Lila restaurant tips included and available on whatsapp throughout your stay
For bookings and more information please contact us by email or telephone.
N.B Sophia apologies in advance but is often working on any number of projects or out with clients alot so please feel free to telephone directly or chase her if you need an immediate response - she would love to hear from you.
WHATSAPP +44 7407148881
SOPHIA@LOOKINGFORLILA.COM
BESPOKE ITINERARIES AND GUIDES FOR NAPLES SITES
Looking for Lila will also help facilitate your whole stay with one-off recommendations or entire weekend itineraries to suit any age group or budget.
Looking for Lila offers:
Liscensed guides for Pompeii and Herculaneum
Recommendations for the best hotels, guest houses and apartments, eateries, and drinking holes
Reliable and fairly-priced taxis and transfers (Paestum, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Pozzuoli, Amalfi etc..).
Anything you want!
Email us with your travel dates and interests and we will be happy to put together a perfect trip. Starting from €350 for a weekend trip with restaurant bookings, unique and bespoke top tips, suggestions.
Articles on Naples by Sophia Seymour
Forever in fashion: a tour of Naples’ finest arts and crafts makers
Published by The Guardian in December 2019
In Naples the build-up to Christmas is chaotic. Pilgrims descend on the city, pushing their way through narrow streets to Via San Gregorio Armeno, where workshops sell handcrafted miniature nativity figurines. The religious scenes, which are made year-round to keep up with demand, are beautifully crafted in wood, terracotta and silk. They are prized by Neapolitans as the epitome of local craftsmanship: honed over centuries and underpinned by a Neapolitan blend of pagan and Catholic beliefs.
There are, however, many other skilled craftspeople working in the city that are worth visiting. A lot of them have regal roots and have survived the peaks and troughs of Neapolitan history. In fact, the modern perception of Naples as a penurious city neglects its rich and flamboyant past. While Florence and Rome’s artisan guilds flourished during the medieval and Renaissance periods, Naples prospered much later, with the arrival of the “Enlightened” occupying Spanish Bourbon monarchy in 1734.
The 20 best things to do in Naples
Published by Time Out December 2019
Charming, hodgepodge, run-down Naples, once a rogue and dangerous Italian city to be avoided, is in the midst of a grand renaissance. Back on the map thanks to the success of Elena Ferrante’s ‘Neapolitan Novels’ and Roberto Saviano’s crime saga ‘Gomorrah’ – plus the international TV adaptations of both – travellers who once would have bypassed this rough-hewn city are flocking here in droves.
And unlike Rome, Florence and Venice, increasingly hollowed out by mass tourism, Naples has still held on to much of its character and old-world charm. Laundry laces the back alleys, markets brim with sweet-smelling local produce, life here is lived on the streets. Neapolitans, despite their dodgy reputation, welcome visitors like guests in their home.
Layers of history are visible as you wander Naples’s narrow, cobbled streets, dipping in and out of the many bars, restaurants and galleries started by the new generation of entrepreneurs, chefs and artists reinvigorating the city once again. Of course, it also has the advantage of having one of the most stunning backdrops in the world. With Vesuvius to the east, the ancient port of Pozzuoli to the west and the timeless islands of Ischia, Procida and Capri nestled in the glittering bay, it’s no wonder the Romans nicknamed the area Campania Felix – the happy land. Head here today, and you’ll quickly understand why. Buone vacanze!
6- Stop Shopping guide to Naples
Published by Conde Nast Traveler
Less than three centuries ago, Naples was the capital of a kingdom, the center of Europe, and in competition with Paris as the chicest capital on the continent. Before the long period of decline that followed Italy’s unification, visitors—especially the British—headed to Naples for decadent souvenirs such as paintings, porcelain, and mandolins. Today, with Naples in the throes of a renaissance since Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend (both the television series and the novels) placed it firmly on the map, the city’s streets are brimming with eager tourists once again. They’re here to see the treasures uncovered from the Greco-Roman period of antiquity and the grand Bourbon architecture of the 18th century, but also to spend time shopping the diverse independent boutiques peppering the ancient streets.
Pasolini's Great Neapolitan Village
Published by Culinary Backstreets on March 16, 2017
and
The Idler Magazine in the May Issue 2017
While in many parts of Europe consumer capitalism has brought an invasion of chain supermarkets and restaurants, contributing to the extinction of independent family-run grocers, Naples and the small distinct districts of its old town have magically managed to resist.
The neighborhood markets retain a charm that is reminiscent of a by-gone era when Europe’s streets would smoke and hiss and the ground would be covered in cabbage crusts and fish entrails. The city’s cobbled and narrow streets revolve around civic life, which still brims with stalls selling fresh mollusks, sacks of nuts, knots of garlic and onions, rounds of cheese and hanging hams. Ragged trouser traders, howling hawkers and crooks cram into the alleyways where fruit and vegetable stands nestle alongside opportunistic vendors roasting a few foraged ch estnuts or artichoke hearts from smoking iron vessels...
Published by Culinary Backstreets on March 28, 2017
Naples' Beloved Montesanto Market
It’s Sunday morning at La Pignasecca market in Naples and time is in flux. Picture a Boccioni painting: movement is blurred, there is an inter-penetration of objects, speeding vehicles and sound – a frenetic moment in the Futurists’ imagination. The city rises as engines splutter, traders hustle, klaxons yelp.
Santa Maria di Montesanto spews punters out into the marketplace after mass; men peel off, heading home to check on the simmering ragù; groomed teenagers peacock on mopeds as groups of women push in line to pick up their last-minute order of fresh pasta, charcuterie and squid. The church bells chime: it’s lunchtime. Anticipation is in the air....
Published by Culinary Backstreets on August 9, 2017
A Clean Bill of Health: La Sanità's Resugence
La pizzaiola, played by Sophia Loren, peddles pizza from a counter on the doorstep of her street level apartment. She kneads dough while crying out for custom in a thick dialect and as clouds of flour fall to the cobbled Neapolitan street. The black and white shots fill the screen with classic southern beauty: Loren’s dark hair and features, soft and full like the rounds of dough in her hands; the deteriorating baroque palazzo; and a narrow street punctuated by stalls decorated with produce and wares.
This scene comes from one of the great cinematic homages to a city: Di Sica’s L’Oro di Napoli (“The Gold of Naples”), a 1954 a film that grapples with the bittersweet tastes of comedy, tragedy, hustling and the art of making do. There’s nowhere better to see Naples in all its “golden” glory than in the very neighborhood in which the film’s star, the inimitable Totó, grew up and where parts of the film are set: La Sanità...
Published by The Guardian on 7th November 2017
Elena Ferrante Photo Essay
Lenù and Lila, the fictional protagonists of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, forge their friendship in a deprived area of Naples, just east of the cacophonous central station. The books follow the girls’ fraught relationship as they navigate the distinct social and economic divides of the city, both railing against and succumbing to the expectations of women as they struggle to be defined by something other than the violence and poverty of their post-war upbringing.
Ferrante maps out in vivid detail every corner of the unnamed “neighbourhood” where they grow up, yet when the characters move into the rest of the city she is meticulous in naming each street and square, allowing Naples to take centre stage as the stories develop. In this way, the success of the novels has seen an unprecedented number of readers from across the world make a pilgrimage to Naples, in search of the raw and gritty side of the city that has traditionally kept visitors away.......
Published by The Guardian on 2nd January 2018
Right to dunk: the children of African immigrants who fought the law to play basketball
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” says Patrick Edomwaddoba, barely audible over the racket of the Tam Tam basketball team warming up for their fourth match of the season. The Pentecostal pastor watches proudly as the players take part in an exercise drill, neatly passing the ball between themselves in a tight lattice before raining a quick succession of shots towards the hoop. Originally from Nigeria, Edomwaddoba is on the sidelines to watch his two sons, Victor and King, compete against the league leaders in an eagerly anticipated encounter. But the outcome of the game seems of little importance when taking into account the struggles the team has been through in order to participate at all. If anyone understands the notion of having to work hard to be a part of something, it would be Edomwaddoba, who, together with the other parents of the team and the rest of the forgotten community of immigrants who live in the Caserta area of Campania, just north of Naples.
When a former Italian basketball champion, Massimo Antonelli, decided to start the team in the area, he had no idea that within a year they would inadvertently find themselves at the centre of a fierce political debate on what it means to be Italian. Until a month ago, the teenage players of the Tam Tam squad had been denied the right to compete against other teams in the regional league because their parents were immigrants and, as such, considered foreigners in the eyes of the law. In their endeavour to contest the decision to bar them a media storm erupted, disrupting practice and shining a light on Italian attitudes towards immigration and integration.
Published by The Guardian on 12th January 2018
Naples’ Fontanelle cemetery: skulls and silence beneath the busy city streets
Given the choice, most people would not enter a shadowy underground chamber stacked high with human skeletons. However, with an understanding of the Neapolitan fetish for skull iconography, a visit to Cimitero delle Fontanelle provides an unlikely calming and reflective antidote to Naples’ frenzied street life. The vast cemetery, dug deep into soft tufo stone, intersects with Neapolitan traditions of religion, folklore and pagan ritual – and is indicative of the many strata of the city’s history. The former quarry became a makeshift burial site in 1656 when a plague reduced the population from 400,000 to 150,000. According to tradition, being buried away from the consecrated soil of their parish church rendered the souls unable to reach heaven. Eternally dislocated from the afterlife, the chamber appears to embody the earthly manifestation of purgatory.
Published in The New Internationalist on January 8th 2018
Kids at work: a migrant in Italy
‘People are talking about me in Gambia,’ Musa Fata says, as he takes money on the door of a basement bar in Naples, where he is putting on his first club night.
It’s true: boys back home are eager to know what life is like in Europe. They tune in to the 24-year-old Afrobeat DJ and promoter’s regular Facebook Live soliloquies on music and fashion, where he shows off his box-fresh sneakers, pristinely ironed clothes and sharply cornrowed hair.
Musa arrived in Italy as part of the great wave of migration that Europe has experienced in recent years. He crossed the perilous desert into Libya where he washed car windows in Tripoli to raise 500 dinar ($360) to pay a smuggler to cross the Mediterranean. In August 2015, as his dinghy drifted off in the wrong direction, he was intercepted by the Italian coast guard and made landfall in Europe.
