Nel ‘500 si diceva che Naples era un Paradise inhabited by poor devils, liars, superstitious people, dirty, thieves, cunning and without dignity. This image of the Neapolitan people piqued the interest and attracted first pioneers and conquerors, then travelers, scholars, and intellectuals.
The cliché of Naples made up of street kids, smugglers, swindlers, and idler also stubbornly persists. A 1987 travel guide distributed worldwide introduces the visit to the city as follows: “Burdened by the densest population of European cities, by profound poverty, unemployment, bureaucratic inefficiency, and organized crime, the city has become a cross between Manhattan and Calcutta for human squalor…”.
Liberty Architecture in Naples
Going down towards Piazza Amedeo, you walk along Parco Margherita street, a concentration of Liberty buildings almost all designed by the Piacenza-born Giulio Ulisse Arata, who also designed the buildings between via Crispi and via Martucci. In the same neighborhood there are many other notable constructions, such as the San Nazzaro theater on via Chiaja, Mannajuolo palace at 36 via Filangieri, Leonetti palace on via dei Mille.
Going up the Rampe Brancaccio here is the first liberty realization in Naples, the Palazzina Velardi, designed in 1906 by Francesco de Simone, rich in floral and neo-Gothic motifs and with a narrow and tall turret overlooking Vomero.
Also in the hills there are many villas and apartment buildings in liberty style. We find them on via Tasso, around via Luca Giordano, at San Martino and Santarella, along the slope that borders Villa Floridiana, with the Villa Loreley that was designed by Adolfo Avena in 1912.
In Posillipo the Carelli park is another example of floral architecture. But the jewel of Neapolitan liberty is at number 5 of salita del Casale: it is Villa Pappone, built in 1912 by Gregorio Botta, with wrought iron decorations and polychrome glass, white stuccoes and majolica. A true hymn to the Vienna Secession.
Spaccanapoli
Here begins Spaccanapoli, the lower decumanus, and the square is somewhat the dividing line between the ancient city and the high medieval and viceregal one. But in reality, the entire area is very rich in Renaissance and Baroque architectures, so much so that since 1995 the historic center has been a UNESCO heritage site. In the last century, such wealth had fruitful periods like the eclectic and floral one, the fascist twenty-year period and the one linked to popular housing of the forties. From the fifties onwards, with Lauro’s period and subsequent real estate speculation, quality urban interventions were lacking, and Neapolitan architecture, except for a few isolated episodes, was suffocated.
