Topographic plans of the districts of the city of Naples

Naples that today appears, at a simple glance - perhaps given from above - as a "full'', crowded and “vertical'',

is evidently the 'precipitate' and the terminal, albeit provisional, of a historical-urban course centuries-old which is seeking to clarify meaning and direction. 

In this sense, we would like to suggest an approach to the city, keeping in mind the need to constantly 'pass' from the plane of history to that of urban design, and vice versa.

It is appropriate, however, that to what has just been recalled we approach without expecting to have in front of a clearly legible whole

consisting of harmoniously juxtaposed or inserted dimensions and sections.

If it is true that, as is commonly repeated, while remaining always in the same place, it respected the pre-existing structure and therefore rebuilt itself,

this happened in some cases (and the classic example is given by the road layout of the Greek city;

Sometimes the city came by arranging itself in layers but through cancellations and reuse (technique of the "palimpsest") of the compressed or manipulated space,

and thus freed; and in others still, disorder and congestion dominated irreparably.

The result is therefore more similar to a patchwork, often with decipherable difficulty, of interpenetrations and boats on which the intentions

and functions expressed by the community over the environment and form have influenced over time.

Index, Particular

17 - Strada nuova di Capodimonte, Particular