The Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli is one of Europe’s most beautiful collections of books and manuscripts.

There the Variantologists met for their last congress (for the time being) and attempted Vesuvian thinking, initiated by the vulcanologist and Vesuvius expert Giovanni P. Ricciardi’s introduction.

Their discussions traversed the deep time of the city and explored its media, philosophers, scientists, and scholars.

Those who engaged with Neapolitan affairs in Naples, and whose contributions are published in this volume, were the art experts Hans Belting and John Berger, the artists Rosa Barba and Peter Blegvad, the papyrologist Luciano Canfora, the mathematician Chen Cheng-Yih, the physicist Otto E. Rössler, and the philosopher and artist Elisabeth von Samsonow.

Early machine poetry texts by the experimental poet Nanni Balestrini are published here for the first time.