While waiting for the new layout of Piazza della Repubblica, the municipal administration and the Port Authority have reached an agreement on the sentry box for customs controls at the entrance to the Repubblica gate. The new structure was built in a very short time and will soon be activated. It will no longer be on the side of the road, but in the middle of the road, also to satisfy the project of the new Piazza della Repubblica. The definitive project of the future restored square, however, is struggling to take off definitively due to a series of corrective measures that are gradually being added depending on the sensitivities of the various sectors that the new structure will affect. Roads, parking, commercial activities, residents and so on, pieces of a puzzle on which the administration is still unable to find a common purpose.
Some points that now seemed established and settled on the future layout of the theater square have been brought back into play. We are talking, for example, about the taxi rank, which over the months was moved first to Largo Sacramento, then to the end of the entrance to the Repubblica gate, then in front of Palazzo Trionfi. Every time it seemed like the right solution to then come back to the table. The same goes for the recycling bins which now seemed to be placed between the corner of Via Cialdini with Piazza Kennedy and a part of Corso Stamira, but here too there would have been interference capable of ruining the agreement. Then there is perhaps the most delicate issue, namely traffic and parking and here the interference increases. Within the centre-right majority there are various voices, often conflicting on the merits; there are even those who would loudly like the return of cars to Corso Garibaldi, pedestrianized since 2009. It would be a step backwards, instead of increasingly regularizing the ZTL, which never really came into operation due to the lack of active gates, with loading-unloading times continually violated.
Speaking of traffic, the plan envisages two parallel routes, the main one from via XXIX Settembre towards the Vanvitelli seafront and the opposite one from via Gramsci towards piazza Kennedy, leaving the rest of the square free for walking and pedestrians, in front of the Teatro delle Muse and the church of the Sacrament. Among the ideas that emerged during the meetings within the council was also that of being able to maintain active transit around the church of the Sacramento, exactly as happens today. Another proposal that causes discussion, but which would not have been completely set aside.
Pierfrancesco Curzi
