>> you know who died? >> yeah, exactly! that's what it was. >> my grandma did the same. but it was also a way for feeling alive. >> elisabetta is showing me the historic heart of the city. for hundreds of years, the poorest people in naples were packed into these narrow streets. terrible sanitation meant that your life could be snatched from you at any moment by the brutal epidemic of their age, cholera. >> people really got scared because, you know, it was an epidemic like more or less the covid-19 virus. so you could transmit it very easily. >> right. right. cholera was spread by water and by food, so people here cooked pieces of bread in hot oil. so the frying is simpler? >> it's simpler. it's easy. you can get a very good point of hygiene because, you know, frying really sterilizes everything. >> yes. it was probably one of the few times in life that frying