entry
July 2003, update June 2023
Mergellina
—Ravaschieri di Satriano (palazzo)
1. —J. Sannazzaro 2. Megayachts banned (2023)
Mergellina is
the "other" port in Naples. It is at the west end of via
Caracciolo before the coast starts its long
curve out to Posillipo. Once, Mergellina was a quaint
fishing village and the subject of folksong and myth.
Today, it has developed as an important harbor for
pleasure and tourist boats, including those that make
runs to Capri and, indeed, to
all of the small secondary ports in the Campania
region, from Bacoli at the extreme top end of the Bay
of Naples to Sapri, many hours to the south. It is,
however, still a working port for fishermen.
(Also see 2014 update here.)
It is not immediately
evident from the modern lay-out of the coast between the
Castel dell'Ovo and the harbor of
Mergellina just how isolated Mergellina was from the
rest of Naples through a long history that stretches
from the days of the Greeks to the present. It is true
that the city of Naples, itself —the
historic center and the immediate surroundings— is
the oldest continuously inhabited center of large
population in Europe. It is, however, equally true that
many of the names that one associates with Naples, such
as Mergellina (and even Santa Lucia, much closer in
towards the city than Mergellina) were, until the 1500s,
"quaint fishing villages on the outskirts of Naples"
(and I copied that phrase from an early tour-guide to
the area, which so described Santa Lucia, the area
around the Egg Catle).
Mergellina is
yet another mile to the west along the waterfront.
Today, Santa Lucia and Mergellina are connected by via
Caracciolo, a road from the late 1800s. (Click here for an item on the
urban renewal of Naples at that time.) If, in the
mind's eye, you strip that road away, you have the
modern Public Gardens, the Villa Comunale, which can
still be said to connect the two ends of the long
stretch of waterfront between Santa Lucia and
Mergellina. Those gardens were built in the 1780s.
Before that park was put in place on reclaimed land,
the whole stretch was a beachfront with water rolling
up approximately to where the road, Riviera di
Chiaia, now runs along the inside of the
gardens, 100 yards from the modern seafront.
And that road, Riviera di Chiaia,
was laid in the 1600s to accommodate the new and
exclusive Spanish mansions that were wending their way
ever to the west towards Mergellina. The first villa
—at the east end of the Villa Comunale, still
a mile from Mergellina— was the Palazzo
Ravaschieri di Satriano, a building from 1605
(photo, left). It was prime beachfront property 400
years ago. (Much later, Goethe mentions the building
with fondness in his Italian Journeys. He
speaks of a lovely and enigmatic woman. He discreetly
avoids detailing his notorious womanizing but he is
probably talking about donna Teresa Filangieri, the
wife of Filippo Ravaschieri, owner of the villa at the
time. (In this photo —on the hill in the background Castel Sant'Elmo is on the left
and the museum of San Martino
on the right.) Drawings of the area from the 1680s
show a lovely coast-line with a long string of villas
starting at this mansion and a single long road,
Riviera di Chiaia, lined with trees. That was how one
got to Mergellina from Naples in the 1600s.
Mergellina itself, before that
date, was pretty much isolated, except by sea and a
single road leading down from the Posillipo height
directly above, a twisting and steep affair called the Rampe di San Antonio. That road
comes out near the modern Mergellina train station. In
the days before trains, all you saw when you got to the
bottom was the Roman tunnel (still in use in those days)
called the "Neapolitan Crypt",
in the area called Piedigrotta,
the church of that name being one of the most famous in
Neapolitan tradition. The modern road, via Posillipo,
that leads from Mergellina west to the very end of the
Posillipo hill was not completed until the French rule
of Naples under Murat, although
the Spanish did build a short stretch in that direction
to get from Mergellina to Villa
Donn'Anna. The Spanish, then, are the ones who
started the development that would eventually
incorporate Mergellina into "greater Naples". That
development was continued under the
short, but productive, period of the Austrian vicerealm and then, of
course, the Bourbons.
Sannazzaro
Portrait of Sannazzaro by Titian
Mergellina's favorite son is, no
doubt, the poet Jacopo
Sannazzaro (1458-1530). (There is historical
documentation that the correct spelling of the surname
is Sannazaro,
i.e. with one z). He was born in Naples and raised in
nearby Nocera de' Pagani. He gained fame and favor as
a poet with the court of Naples and was rewarded in
1497 by Frederick II of Aragon with a home, the Villa
Mergellina, a large property still in existence
(though subdivided many times over) that today holds
the church of Santa
Maria del Parto, which Sannazzaro founded and
where he is entombed.
Sannazzaro wrote at an interesting time in Italy. In spite of the enormous influence of Dante's Divina Commedia (written in the vernacular), men of letters and, generally, all educated persons, were expected to have a command of Latin. Scholarly writing was still all in Latin, throughout Europe. Poetry and other literature —well, that gave you a bit more leeway.
Sannazzaro wrote his De
partu Virginis in Latin; it is little read today,
but at the time, it earned him the nick-name of "the
Christian Virgil." He also wrote in Italian (called
"Tuscan" at the time, since Dante was from Tuscany), as
in Arcadia
(1504), a masterpiece that instituted the theme of
Arcadia, an idyllic land, in European literature. That
work had an enormous influence on subsequent European
literature. He also recast Neapolitan proverbs into
Italian and published them. Sannazzaro was a member of
the famed Accademia founded by Giovanni Pontano and wrote
under the pseudonym of Actius Syncerus; he eventually
headed the Academy. His verses in Italian are part of
the body of literature that helped form that language in
the Middle Ages. A main square, one block from
Mergellina harbor, is named for him.
-------------------update June
2023---------------------------------
The
Case of the Miffed
Magnates
You may know some of these names:
Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett,
Mark Zuckerberg...a few more. They are
dollar-billionaires, on all lists of the world's richest
men. Most of them have luxury superyachts, either new,
ugly, anonymous, motor yachts or classy sailing yachts.
Oh, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers —
the world's richest womam —
her $86.3 billion fortune is from selling lip-stick
door-to-door and from her holdings in L'Oréal, the
world's largest cosmetics company.
Mergellina harbor if you over-saturate
the colors as
much as yacht owners are over-saturated with money
Billionaires are now ‘disappointed’
after superyachts have been banned from the Naples port
of Mergellina. (This is not the main commercial port,
but rather the much smaller secondary port at the
western end of the Chiaia section of the ciy. The fuss
started when Bernard Arnault 's superyacht fell victim
to new size restrictions at Mergellina. His Symphony,
a 101-meter, six-deck boat-a-palooza was refused
permission to dock due to recent limitations on size,
which ban yachts of more than 75 meters in length. This
came as a surprise to fashion tycoon, Arnault, who has
previously been able to dock his yacht there. The Symphony
has the usual super-amenities —a glass-bottom
swimming pool, outdoor cinema, motor boats to take you
ashore, watertoys the size of the Hindenberg...you know.
They always have more crew than passengers. If a ship
has, say, 8 staterooms (meaning 10-20 passengers), there
will be twice that many crew to sail the ship and care
for the passengers. The groans from throughout the
wealth-o-sphere have been audible and agonized. One said
the move was “incomprehensible” given that megayachts
have docked there for years, and that Naples would miss
out on the type of visitor who bring luster to a city
that “often makes the news for negative reasons”. Some
complaints are from people who run the port, who say,
reasonably, they've always taken big boats. The wealthy
bring money, create jobs and increase the fame of the
city. I have no stake at all in this except I see
Mergellina harbor from my balcony. I don't know what
floats your boat, but if you want to call
Bernard Arnault aboard the Symphony and console
him, their callsign is ZGEP2.
I do note that, indeed, megayachts that used to dock at
Mergellina are now excluded, including the two shown
here — the Athena
(90 mtrs/295 ft.) and the Eos (92 mtrs/305
ft.) docked at Mergellina a few years ago. (I don't know
which is which. All megayachts look the same to me. This
seems to me to be a clear male pubescent acting out of
what Marine Psychology and Psycholinguistics (my
Bible!) calls "Bowsprit envy." But judge not or else
you'll get keelhauled. I merely note the presence of my
own modest vessel off to the left in the foreground.
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