This article is published in issue 20 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until May 14, 2024.
Avoided, talked about, visited. In a nutshell, this is the progressive history of Health district to Naples. A place that has received a lot of attention in recent decades. By international museums, Bocconi, and even Sting, with the concert project Tornaccantà.
What’s happened? Second Pier Paolo Pasolini, «Naples is a tribe that has decided not to surrender to so-called modernity and this refusal is sacrosanct». It was 1970 and the intellectual was in conversation with the Neapolitan journalist Antonio Ghirelli during the filming of the Decameron. After more than 50 years, Pasolini’s words are particularly relevant in relation to the Rione Sanità. This Neapolitan microcosm represents a bastion of history, tradition and popular rebirth that refuses to be visited according to the most canonical and insidious forms of contemporary tourism.
Sanità does not give in to the invasive flows of tourists nor does it lash out against those who wish to know its reality. The neighborhood has achieved a virtuous balance, practicing a third way between redevelopment and hospitality. In Sanità, tourism is a resource for saving and staying. A chance to generate awareness of the value of one’s roots and contribute to the well-being of those who have lived here for generations and perhaps do not necessarily have to leave in search of better opportunities. The energy of the community has given rise to responsible and socially sustainable tourism. Between cooperatives, associations and religious groups, there are 30 non-profit organizations operating in Sanità today. A widespread impulse whose genesis dates back to 2006. Father Antonio Loffredo and six young volunteers decided to found the social cooperative La Paranza Onlus. Two years later, the group begins an unprecedented experience: the reopening of the Catacombs of San Gennaro. Cleaned, illuminated and valorised, this underground heritage dating back to the 2nd century AD returns to being a visitable destination for tourists and the citizens of Naples themselves. Paranza continued with the redevelopment of the Catacombs of San Gaudioso, the route of the Sacred Mile, the Basilica of San Severo and the Fontanelle Cemetery. In ten years, visitors to the Catacombs have gone from 5 thousand to 150 thousand.
Numbers that generate a positive socio-economic impact for Naples, so much so that it became a case study conducted by the departments of Economics of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli and Social Sciences of the University of Naples Federico II. The result of the investigation? Paranza Onlus generates related activities of approximately 33 million euros per year. An antidote to unemployment and the emptying of the urban centre. That of the Paranza is a choral result which in its purity elevates the careful management of this ancient intersection of model roads. While political strategies and supranational appeals seem to falter, the inhabitants of Sanità are implementing some of the key principles of the World Tourism Organization: creating or giving new light to certain cultural attractions, improving infrastructure, involving local realities to guarantee real benefits to the community . An impulse which, from a local, positively popular phenomenon, can inspire the virtuous management of the Italian artistic and cultural heritage on a larger scale. In fact, a positive meaning is found by already reflecting on the etiology of the place.
The district was named Sanità in relation to the Latin salubritas, perceived in the salt that purifies the air of the neighborhood and in the adjacent wooded areas. But another aspect also goes hand in hand with the concept of salvation, that achieved through the supernatural sphere; in particular the cult of the Virgin Mary. Legend has it that here the deceased grant protection to the living in the form of grace. City within the city, Sanità stands at the foot of the Capodimonte hill and, since the Hellenistic age, has been a sacred place. Here the link with the afterlife is rooted in the centuries-old perpetration of rituals of which some spaces, such as the Fontanelle Cemetery, still bear direct testimony today. An ancient ossuary of immense size which houses around 40 thousand remains of victims of the plague of 1656 and the cholera of 1836. Here the rite of the “pezzentelle souls” was celebrated, the adoption and care by a Neapolitan of a skull of an abandoned soul in exchange for protection. Sanità is thus configured as an enclave north of the walls of Naples, dedicated in ancient times to burials: from the Greek hypogea to the Christian catacombs, but also to the cult of chastity as evidenced by the nearby Borgo dei Vergini. Over time, the district evolves into paradox. Between the 17th and 18th centuries it enjoyed fortune thanks to the construction of monumental residences, including Palazzo dello Spagnuolo and Sanfelice, urban theaters born from the architectural imagination of Ferdinando Sanfelice. Baroque residences first, then divided into condominiums. Their views onto the outside symbolize a solution of continuity with the streets of the district, a sense of participation that does not decay but is rather accentuated. For Sanità, carriages of popes, cardinals and kings ran towards the Royal Palace of Capodimonte, until a historical short circuit occurred in the 19th century. The bridges symbolize connection, but not the one built at the behest of General Murat, who decreed the exclusion of the Rione Sanità from the center of Naples, “crushing” it beneath its arches and overlooking its homes.
A complex, stratified neighborhood plagued by social and economic problems, Sanità has resisted. An awakening “from below” that arises from having gained awareness of its peculiar identity. A source of commitment and redemption, the greatest value at Sanità is the human one. Here, public and private mutually enhance each other, sharing intergenerational ideals. This is the case of the return to the Rione Sanità of the Cristallini Hypogeum by the Calise Martuscelli family – who also with Casa D’Anna dedicated the second floor of Palazzo Giannattasio to tourist accommodation. Going to 133 Via dei Cristallini and descending 11 meters underground means going back to the Neapolis of Magna Graecia. A katabasis that rewinds the flow of History back 2,400 years. Rediscovered in 1889 by the Baron of Donato, these four Hellenistic tombs carved into the tuff can be visited starting from 2022. An architectural and conservative restoration project that has captured the attention of various international institutions, including the Liebieghaus museum in Frankfurt am Main and the Bocconi School of Management. Wall paintings, trompe l’oeil decorations, inscriptions and exquisite klinai – sarcophagi beds accompanied by mattresses and double sculpted cushions, painted in yellow, purple, blue and red bands; but also more than 700 finds related to funerary objects, now on display at National Archaeological Museum of Naples together with photographs by Mimmo Jodice. Quintessence of the sense of sharing and dedication that resides in Sanità, the Hypogeum of the Cristallini contributes to raising the artistic-cultural offer of the district, guaranteeing the employment of the young people of the neighborhood, its guardians and guides. The rebirth of Sanità also passes through other forms of experimentation: from music to contemporary art. Since 2008, the Sanitansamble Association has been promoting collective musical practice as a means of organisation, listening and development for the new generations of healthcare professionals; today the orchestra is made up of over 80 children, aged from seven to 24. In the district, even the most recent artistic forms are practiced for socio-educational purposes. A new case is the La Sorte cooperative, made up of young people from the neighborhood who were trained by La Paranza Onlus to manage the Jago Museum, the Cristallini Church and the Bianchi Chapel. A model of social innovation in which the citizens themselves work to guarantee a varied offer, the result of cohesion and cultural mediation between the inhabitants of Sanità and its visitors. This neighborhood teaches us that tourism is first and foremost a resource for discovery and sharing starting from the residents. It can be a safe conduct to regenerate a community and protect its sense of belonging to a place. Whoever stays and develops awareness of how to enhance the cultural capital around them wins. If entropy measures how close a system is to a state of equilibrium, the humanity of Rione Sanità is increasingly approaching a state of grace.
