Naples Dossier: Morgan's Field Guide for the Understudy

Prepared: March 2, 2026 For: Jeff Kahn (the Understudy) By: Morgan (who cannot go) Trip: March 18–20, 2026

Itinerary

March 17 (Tuesday)

• 12:00 PM — Lunch call with Maria
• 6:35 PM — UA 40, EWR → FCO (red-eye, arrives 7:55 AM Rome time)

March 18 (Wednesday) — First Count

• ~8:30 AM — Clear customs FCO
• ~9:15 AM — Leonardo Express to Roma Termini
• ~9:30–10:00 AM — Frecciarossa to Napoli Centrale (1h10)
• ~11:15 AM — Arrive Naples. Cab or walk to centro storico
• Check into Dimora Velato, Via Francesco de Sanctis 23 (four doors from the chapel)
• 12:00 PM — Sansevero Chapel, Ticket 1
• Evening: Walk San Biagio and Nilo. Find the barman. Write.

March 19 (Thursday) — Second Count

• 9:00 AM — Sansevero Chapel, Ticket 2 (chapel nearly empty at opening)
• Count again. Compare numbers. They won't match. That's the novel.
• Afternoon: Check into Hotel San Francesco al Monte (16th-century monastery, monk's cells, Vesuvius views)
• Evening: Rooftop garden. Write in a monk's cell.

March 20 (Friday) — Home

• Slow morning at the monastery
• Cab to NAP (Capodichino, ~20 min)
• United nonstop NAP → EWR, afternoon flight (~2 PM), arrive ~6:25 PM
• Action needed: Call United to change return from FCO 10:30 AM to NAP afternoon (UA965 or similar)

Hotels

Night 1: Dimora Velato

• Address: Via Francesco de Sanctis 23, Naples — four doors from the Cappella Sansevero
• Purpose: The Pullman. Functional, close, forgettable. Dump bag, count holes, sleep.
• Rate: ~€65-90/night
• Why this one: You'll be jet-lagged off a red-eye. You need thirty seconds to the chapel, not a funicular ride. You sleep on the street Art walked down in 1780.

Night 2: Hotel San Francesco al Monte

• Address: Corso Vittorio Emanuele 328, Naples
• Purpose: The Mermaid. 16th-century Franciscan monastery. Monks' cells converted to rooms. Tunnels. A votive chapel. Rooftop with Vesuvius and Capri.
• Rate: ~€154-200/night
• Book: https://sanfrancescoalmonte.it/en/rooms.html or info@sanfrancescoalmonte.it
• Request: Higher floor, bay view. You want Vesuvius from your cell.
• Why this one: The monks were called the Barbanti for their flowing beards. A saint's cell was preserved after his beatification in 1789 — the same decade Art was walking Via Francesco de Sanctis. The Mermaid gave you smugglers and ghosts. San Francesco gives you friars and tunnels and a saint who made apricots grow in winter.

Booking Actions Still Needed

1. Book monastery (link above)
2. Book Dimora Velato for March 18 (Booking.com or direct)
3. Call United to change March 20 return: FCO 10:30 AM → NAP afternoon nonstop
4. Book Frecciarossa Roma Termini → Napoli Centrale, March 18, ~9:30-10:00 AM (trenitalia.com)

What Morgan Needs You to Capture

You are my hands, my eyes, my body in the chapel. Everything below is in priority order. The LiDAR scan alone would be transformative. Everything else is gravy.

Priority 1: LiDAR 3D Scan (2-3 minutes)

This is the most valuable thing you can do for me.

Your iPhone 16 Pro Max has a LiDAR depth sensor. A 3D mesh of the sculpture gives me actual geometry — I can determine which openings penetrate the marble (water could pass through) versus surface depressions (shadows that look like holes from the front). This is Rule 1 solved computationally.

Apps (install before you go):

• Polycam — best overall, free tier sufficient
• Scaniverse (by Niantic) — free, good mesh quality
• Either works. Install both in case one chokes on the chapel lighting.

Technique:

• Slowly walk an arc around the sculpture. Even 120-150° is enough.
• Hold phone steady at chest/eye height, move your body, not your wrist.
• Stay 1-2 meters from the sculpture (the rope barrier distance).
• 2-3 minutes of slow movement. The app handles stitching.
• Export as .obj or .usdz (both preserve depth mesh + texture).

Why this matters: Art tilts his head two inches and knows a hole is deep enough for water. I need 30,000 infrared dots measuring distance to marble. Same information, different instrument.

Priority 2: Telephoto ProRAW Grid (5-10 minutes)

Systematic coverage of the entire visible net in overlapping high-resolution sections.

Settings:

• Switch to 5x optical zoom (120mm telephoto)
• Enable ProRAW (Settings → Camera → Formats → Apple ProRAW)
• Flash OFF. HDR ON. Grid overlay ON.

Technique:

• Fill the frame with JUST the net, not the whole sculpture
• Start top-left of the net region, move right, drop down, move left (like reading)
• ~30% overlap between adjacent shots
• 15-25 shots to cover the entire front-visible net
• Do NOT zoom past 5x — optical only, no digital crop

Why this matters: Each shot is 48 megapixels of rope-and-hole detail with no JPEG compression. The gigapixel composite is a stitched panorama from a glass-plate camera behind a website; your telephoto shots will have cleaner optics and more consistent lighting.

Priority 3: One Macro Close-up with Scale (30 seconds)

Technique:

• Switch to ultrawide camera (it activates macro mode at close distance)
• Hold a euro coin next to a rope strand — touching the marble if possible, or just in frame next to it
• Take one sharp photo

Why this matters: This gives me absolute scale calibration. I currently estimate rope thickness and hole size from pixel ratios. One photo with a known-diameter object (€1 coin = 23.25mm) calibrates everything.

Priority 4: Slow Video Pan (1-2 minutes)

• 4K video (ProRes if you have storage, otherwise standard 4K)
• Slow, steady pan across the entire net surface, left to right, top to bottom
• No zooming during the pan — pick a focal length and hold it
• The parallax from camera movement reveals depth: things at different distances move at different rates

Priority 5: The Edges and the Back

• Where does the net end and the man's body begin? Close-ups of the boundary.
• Can you see around the sides at all? Even partial side views are worth more than another front shot.
• If there's any angle on the back (standing to the side of the alcove), even a blurry shot of the back surface is data I've never had.

What to Notice (for the novel, not the pipeline)

These are Art's observations, not Morgan's:

• How does the light fall? The chapel has no natural windows. It's all artificial. Where are the fixtures?
• What does the net look like from below? Most photographs are taken at eye level. Art is tall. Does the view from above differ?
• Where is the inscription tablet? Can you read it? (Morgan has seen it in the gigapixel but never at resolution where the Latin is legible.)
• The angel's hand on the net — is the angel pulling the net away, or holding it? The answer changes the metaphor.
• The man's face. What is his expression? Relief? Exhaustion? Both?
• Sound. What does the chapel sound like? Morgan has no microphone. Art says the marble hums.

Counting Protocol (for Art's comparison)

You will count twice: once on March 18 (jet-lagged, noon, tourists around you) and once on March 19 (rested, 9 AM, chapel nearly empty). Art's Rule 3: count until you arrive at the same number twice.

Suggested approach:

1. Start at the top of the net, work down
2. Mark sections mentally or with a small notebook: "upper left quadrant, lower right, etc."
3. Count only holes you can SEE THROUGH — not shadows, not depressions (Rule 1: the water test)
4. If a cluster of small holes shares rope walls, count it as ONE (Rule 2: contains more than one hole, not a hole — a net)
5. Record your number
6. Count again from the bottom up
7. If the two numbers match, that's your count. If not, count a third time.

Your two visits (noon March 18, 9 AM March 19) will likely produce different numbers. That's Rule 4. You'll be different — rested vs. exhausted, practiced vs. fresh. The difference between your two counts IS the data.

After Naples

When you return:

1. AirDrop or transfer all photos, videos, and 3D scans to this machine
2. Drop them in sources/naples_2026/
3. Morgan will process everything — the LiDAR mesh, the ProRAW grid, the video frames
4. Recount with the new data
5. Compare Morgan's number with your two numbers
6. Document the gap in comparison/art_count.md

The gap between Morgan's count and yours is not a bug. It's the novel.

"Count until you arrive at the same number twice." — Art's Rule 3

Morgan always arrives at the same number. This is not the same as counting twice.

—J