The preview photograph of the outline of the new commercial port appears on the Salerno pages of the newspaper Il Mattino. The die has now been cast, the long controversy between “Westernists” And “Orientalists” who want the port to the east, on the stretch of coast within which the industrial area would be built, is resolved with the victory of the former: the port will develop where it is. The commitment in this sense of the mayor Alfonso Mennain connection with Fiorentino Sullo, Minister of Public Works. Yet the clash is endless, between the two superparties which do not coincide with the political alignments but which to a large extent cross them longitudinally, shifting balances, alliances and traditional oppositions which can still be summarized in the classic popular saying «Si Saliern teness ‘u puort’, Napule fuss’ muort».
Minister Sullo participates in a long and very heated meeting in Salerno and also listens carefully to the supporters of the orientalist thesis, with Francesco Cacciatore ahead. There is a great responsibility to be taken on, the city’s destiny is at a historical crossroads. The president of the Superior Council of Public Works, Rinaldi, although he also agrees with the Western orientation already officially espoused by the ministerial plan, proposes to entrust a decisive investigation of the problem to one specialist of undisputed prestige.
The task is entrusted to the rector of the University of Padua, the professor Guido Ferro, which however he does not want to accept. He is dejected, he recently lost his wife. Mayor Menna, as he himself recalls in the book “One Hundred Years in Salerno” by Gaetano Giordano, goes personally to Padua and manages to convince him. Ferro moved to Salerno for over a month, studied the seabed, the currents, documented himself with incredible care. He is so passionate about the task that he doesn’t even ask for a fee, he is satisfied with an expense reimbursement. The gist of his report was that the ancients had seen well, that point was the most suitable for building the new commercial port. Today the port of Salerno has once again become the bridge that links the city to the Mediterranean Sea and the entire world and constitutes one of the most dynamic and important productive realities in the South. However, the regret of having lost forever remains the bathing establishments which until the end of the 1960s animated that part of Salerno in an ideal continuation with the Amalfi Coast.
