Lino Banfi has a very strong bond with the Neapolitan city, a touching anecdote about the 1958 Christmas Eve he spent in the city.
Lino Banfi is in love with Naplesbut his connection with the Neapolitan city was born at Christmas 1958, when a stranger who met in the city gave him food and lodging, even without ever having visited them: “We unemployed actors had to pay for a room night after night because no, credit to us. By the evening of December 24th I had scrapped so little that I had to decide whether to eat or sleep inside.” At this point a passer-by approached him and invited him to his home to eat and spend Christmas Eve there.
“His name was Ciro, he told me where nine eat, ten eat: he had eight children. He let me sleep in his house, and the next morning he gave me a thousand lire to take the train back to my village,” says Banfi.
Then he reveals: “A few years later I returned to Naples to look for him, to thank him and to give him a prize, a gift. But I never found him. No one seemed to know him or have ever seen him. One day a cardinal.” A friend of mine asked me why I kept looking for this Ciro in Naples. He told me that I would never find him because this Ciro was an angel who decided to save me that night. Banfi closed with a veil of emotion.