To the rubble of Palargento we’ve gotten used to it, it’s painful to look at them, but they’ve been there for twenty years and today the pangs caused by the memory are no longer as painful as they once were.
Faced with the definitive humiliation inflicted on Fuorigrotta sports hall from the garbage pirates, however, we cannot contain the indignation and anger. We returned there, as often happens, partly to tell stories, partly to remember, and we had the definitive confirmation that today the ruins of the sports facility that made a couple of generations of Neapolitans dream have become, definitively, a landfill.
And this is not acceptable in the Naples who dreams big with Pnrr funds, who imagines new sports facilities, who plans a future tenaciously dedicated to sport. How can a mega landfill grown among the ruins of a sports palace, in the heart of the officially designated city, be justified? «European Capital of Sport for the year 2026»? Rhetorical question, no answer is expected.
But then, faced with the humiliation of Palargento, the motivation for the designation comes back to mind: Naples was named capital by virtue of the «laudable example of promoting sport for all, as a means of improving health, promoting social integration, facilitate education and promote respect.” Look at the photos on this page, go and take a look at the video we posted on our social channels, re-read the reasons for the designation and take stock for yourself.
The garbage
The area that once housed the building is all too easy to conquer. To separate the ruin from the municipal car park in front of it, the local administration has set up some barriers; someone then went to move them, to make the path of the unloading trucks easier, but no one noticed: incredible, right?
And no one has thought of putting those barriers back in place, perhaps fixing them to the ground, so that access is free to anyone who needs to get rid of waste, especially bulky waste. In the area below the ancient stands, the only remaining portion of the Palargento, from the first days after the demolition, the garbage criminals arrived to unload material: down there, in the part now hidden by the vegetation that is covering the rubble, there are high hills of construction waste. And among that stuff there is also dangerous material: asbestos, asbestos.
Plates that disintegrate and release infinitesimal particles into the air that enter the lungs and rapidly degenerate into tumors. You look at that stuff, you hear the voices of the students of the ISS Vittorio Emanuele playing in the courtyard ten meters away, and the anger turns into concern. Why isn’t there a cleanup project?
The assault
Once all the “hidden” areas of the ancient building had been filled, the rubbish idiots began to leave their rubbish even in the center between the two stands. In that large area that once housed the parquet and, underneath, the small gyms, the kids trained.
The space is so vast that you only have to choose where to create new landfills. At the end, on the right, there is the new area of building pirates who continue to spill tons of remains of construction work. Further in the center there is the area of unscrupulous gardeners: they cut down trees and leave the trunks here, they prune gardens and abandon piles of branch and grass clippings in the Palargento, they go to uproot diseased palm trees and rush to deposit them in this landfill at no cost.
Of course there are also those who have jumped at the opportunity to get rid of common rubbish. There are bags of unsorted waste scattered here and there, piles of discarded furniture, there is also an unusual area, in the area raised above the road level, where plastic pipes and remnants of electrical material have been accumulated.
Then there are, patchy, the signs of the illegal inhabitants, the desperate people who continue to live among this rubble: mattresses, piles of clothes, remains of food, burnt corners where they set up fires to cook something and, above all, areas transformed into toilet areas, a triumph of repugnant rubbish.
The dangers
The simplicity with which the structure is accessed also opens a large chapter dedicated to safety. How is that possible access to these places isn’t it tenaciously armored? Is it possible that the dramatic events that cyclically occur inside abandoned structures do not convince the administration to plan methods to make this ruin inviolable?
Instead whoever wants to enter in there, and faces a thousand dangers. Most of the stair railings have been stolen by iron thieves, so with every step you risk falling into the void, along the steps there is an inexhaustible array of rusty iron spikes, where there were seats, which guarantees injuries and tetanus in the event of an accident. Then there are the endless structural problems that turn into a continuous rain of debris falling from above, some even large.
The future
Closed in April 1998 for an anti-seismic adaptation, the Palargento it remained abandoned for about seven years. In 2005 it was decided that it would be better to tear it down and rebuild it. After destroying everything except the stands, it was realized that there was not enough money for reconstruction and the sports hall, inaugurated in 1963 for the Mediterranean games, was left in the state it is in now.
Recovery and reconstruction projects are cyclically proposed. Even the current municipal administration has repeatedly explained that it has in mind the revitalization of the plant, however focusing on private initiatives. In January, when mayor Manfredi went to Palabarbuto to applaud the Gevia chorus arose from the stands aimed directly at the mayor: «We want Palargento back».
For now, however, Palargento is just a humiliating landfill.
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