Today we take you again to visit our district, the Vomero, one of the most significant areas of our Naples, as we tried to illustrate in our posts a few years ago. This time, however, we will focus on researching the buildings built by a particularly brilliant architect, Adolfo Avena; we will meet his works walking through the Vomero, where most of his works are scattered, naturally without any ambition on our part to be architecture experts. For our needs it is important to have an electric wheelchair available, given the considerable slopes of the Vomerese roads. Some biographical notes found on various websites:
ADOLFO AVENA (1860 - 1937)
He was an Italian engineer and architect. Active mainly in Naples, he was one of the greatest exponents of the Neapolitan Liberty. He graduated in Engineering in 1884, as soon as he graduated he presented a project for an aerial funicular between via Toledo and Corso Vittorio Emanuele to the municipality of Naples with Stanislao Sorrentino (engineer of the Neapolitan tramways). The project consisted of a long viaduct in iron trusses that cut through the Spanish Quarters. He was hired in 1886 at the Ministry of Education of which he became extraordinary engineer of the Monuments of Rome and later director of the regional office of Monuments. He was responsible for the restoration of a series of civil and religious buildings in Southern Italy. His reliefs of historic buildings are noteworthy and will be shown at the National Exhibition of Turin in 1898. From 1910 he devoted himself to the design of villas and palaces on the Vomero hill, thus becoming the main reference of the liberty style of the district. So let's start our Vomerese walk as if we were arriving from the center of Naples with the Central Funicular in Piazza Fuga; as soon as we come out of the funicular we find ourselves in front of the outline of the Palazzo Avena, built between 1927 and 1928:
We go down Via Cimarosa and with a detour we reach Via Palizzi, where we find the important Villa Ascarelli, built between 1913 and 1915, one of the first structures to use reinforced concrete:
Going back to Via Cimarosa, we walk along it until we reach the entrance of the Villa Floridiana, next to which we find another creation of Avena, the Villino Catello - Piccoli, built in 1918:
Up to now, the journeys to reach the various buildings have been relatively short; now, to reach what is perhaps the most suggestive realization of Avena we have to go a little further (Via Cimarosa, Via Belvedere, Corso Europa) to reach Via Tasso, where we find Villa Spera, built in 1922:
The appearance of the villa in its time has given rise to numerous legends, according to which it is haunted and inhabited by ghosts, so much so that it was also used as a film set in Sergio Corbucci's Giallo Napoletano film, shot in 1979, and in La guerra di Mario by Antonio Capuano, 2005. The villa was also the seat of the German command during the Nazi occupation. It is currently used for ceremonies and meetings. So, what do you think of these constructions so imaginative and full of various symbols and coats of arms? You will have noticed that in the photos we have lingered a lot on the details, because they are the ones that jump to the eyes of those who, like us, walk around the Vomero with curious eyes, and they are the wealth of these buildings. It must be said that the district, which was born at the end of the 19th century, is full of liberty and neoclassical buildings built by various architects; what you can hardly see from the photos is that the buildings of the 60s of the last century have placed under siege these Art Nouveau buildings, some of which (Villa Scaldaferri and Villa Avena among all), have been destroyed to make room for the condominiums that have upset in those years the physiognomy of the district.
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Allow us now an off-topic digression, linked to cinematic current events: we are talking about the villa "La Santarella", by the Neapolitan playwright Eduardo Scarpetta. Built in 1909 according to his specific guidelines, "La Santarella" is located in via Luigia Sanfelice 18, at the intersection with via Palizzi. Eduardo Scarpetta chose the name of the villa to commemorate the success of his comedy “Na Santarella”, the proceeds of which allowed him to build the house. The villa is famous for the writing on the facade, QUI RIDO IO (Here I Laugh), with which Scarpetta meant that if the audience in the theater laughed with his plays, in this pleasant place he was the one to enjoy life. And in these days of September 2021 Mario Martone's film Qui rido io is released in cinemas, which narrates the biography of Scarpetta and his numerous descendants, including the three De Filippo brothers: we take this opportunity to close this post with the image of Santarella:
