One azure morning in December, Laura Cozzolino arrived at her corner cafe in central Naples and ordered her usual: a dense espresso, which arrived steaming hot on the dark marble counter. She lingered over the aroma, and then knocked it back in two quick sips. But instead of paying for one coffee, she paid for two, leaving the receipt for the other — a caffè sospeso, or suspended coffee — with the bartender for a stranger to enjoy. The suspended coffee is a Neapolitan tradition that boomed during World War II and has found a revival in recent years during hard economic times. From Naples, by word of mouth and via the Internet, the gesture has spread throughout Italy and around the world, to coffee bars as far-flung as Sweden and Brazil. In some places in Italy, the generosity now extends to the suspended pizza or sandwich, or even books. Naples is a city well known for its grit, beauty, chaos and crime. Despite those things, or perhaps because of them, its people are also famous for their solidarity in the face of hardship. With its rich diversity of neighborhoods, coffee bars in Naples hold a special place as gathering points for all: senators, families with grandchildren, street artists, businessmen and beggars. No one here seems to know precisely when or how the suspended coffee began. But that it started here speaks to the small kindnesses that Italians are known for — and also of the special place that coffee occupies in the culture. In a time of hardship, Italians can lack many things, but their coffee is not one of them. So it may be the most common item left at many cafes, as a gift, for people too poor to pay. "Coffee consumption predated the unification of Italy by more than 200 years, so the rituals and traditions around it are very ancient," Andrea Illy, chairman of Illy, said in a phone interview. "In Naples, coffee is a world in itself, both culturally and socially. Coffee is a ritual carried out in solidarity." That solidarity is spreading. In 2010, an ensemble of small Italian cultural festivals gave form to the tradition of generosity by creating the Suspended Coffee Network. The purpose was to weather the severe cuts to the state cultural budgets by organizing and promoting their own activities together. But it also started solidarity initiatives for those in need. Encouraging a donated coffee was one of them. Now, across Italy, the bars that have joined the network display the suspended coffee label — a black and brown sticker with a white espresso cup — in their windows. "To me," said a bartender, "The philosophy of the suspended coffee is that you are happy today, and you give a coffee to the world, as a present."