entry
August 2005
"You Leave the Mergellina Station
'bout a Quarter-to-Four..."
(Sorry. I can't help
myself.)
The history of
efforts to give the city of Naples a good,
modern underground train system, called a Metropolitana,
is long and complicated. It starts with the first
never-to-be realized proposal of Lamont
Young in 1884 and runs through ongoing
construction (started in the 1970s) to build an
extensive underground rail network dedicated solely
to the Metropolitana. "Solely," because for many
decades, whatever metro line existed in Naples at all
was a single line sharing the same track with the main
Naples-Rome rail route, itself an interesting project
in which the station at Mergellina plays an integral
part.
2005
restoration
What even
many Neapolitans call, simply, the "Metro station" at
Mergellina is in reality the "other" station (besides
the main station at Piazza Garibaldi) in Naples for
long distance rail travel. When Mergellina station was
opened on October 28, 1927, it completed the
Naples-Rome link running west out of the city, then up
the coast towards the capital.
The
opening of the station was front-page news in Naples
at the time. It was one of many stations and other
public buildings opened during the same few weeks
throughout Italy, carefully timed for the nation-wide
fifth anniversary celebration of the "Fascist
Revolution" (that is, Mussolini's March on Rome of
October 28, 1922). The new Naples-Rome rail-link was
given thousand of words of journalistic hyperbole: it
was the logical modern extension of the ancient Roman
dedication to road building, a modern road of steel
flanking the ancient Appian Way —that
sort of thing. The fact of the new rail line got more
attention than the station itself; yet, there was a
paragraph of praise for the architect, G.B. Milani,
who had managed to build "a fluid facade...big but not
heavy."
Anyone with a
knowledge of the various waves of architecture that
have surged through the city of Naples over the
centuries can look around and say, "That's Angevin;
that's Bourbon, that's Spanish; that's monolithic
Fascist Art Deco from the 1930's..." When you come to
1900 in Naples, however, things get a little confused.
If you say, "Oh, that building is Risanamento,"
you are naming the mammoth urban renewal project that
rebuilt Naples between 1880 and 1915; that is, you are
naming a period of time, not an architectural style.
The same goes for "Umbertino" —applied to
architecture and almost anything else— including hair
style (!)—popular during the age of King Humbert I of
Italy (monarch from 1878-1900). That term applies
throughout Italy and, again, refers to a period of
time and not a specific style of architecture.
The
architectural term used to describe Milani's creation
was: "...barochetto
romano". That is, the station is Baroquely
ornate. ("Barochetto" refers to a transitional period to
Rococo (around 1720). Indeed, bits of the facade would
fit right in with some Neapolitan architecture from that
period. The station was not meant to look 200 years old,
however; it was built to fit in with other buildings in
the area, many of which were quite fashionable and from
1890-1910, built roughly in the style known in Italian
as "Liberty" (known in
English by the French term "Art Nouveau".) That style,
itself, is self-consciously ornate, highly decorative
and features —among other curls, swirls and undulations—
writhing plant forms, which you find on the station of
Mergellina. Characteristic, too, of "Liberty" buildings
in Naples is the presence of classical statuary, which
you also find. (Those statues give you the "Roman" in "barochetto romano").
Thus, the station, cleverly, looked old and modern at
the same time.
(I
am thankful that the station did not fall victim —as
did many similar buildings from the 1920s— to the
Fascist wrecking balls of the 1930s, when the regime
decided to go into giant, smooth marble-slab
architecture. (The main post
office in Naples is larger than Holland.)
The Mergellina station was, at the time, the
most elegant one in the city. (As a matter of fact, it
still is; the main station downtown has been rebuilt
twice since the 1920s, and is huge and modern. But
elegant? Not even close.) Mergellina apparently was
the preferred place for a certain class of passenger
to alight aloofly (or aloof alightly) in the 1920s and
30s in Naples, just a few blocks from the fashionable
buildings along the seaside at Mergellina, with easy
access to the exclusive areas of the Posillipo coast.
(Getting off the train there meant you didn't get
dumped into the masses at the main station in the
—ugh!— east end of town near the largest prison in
southern Italy! Today, indeed, Mergellina still serves
long distance trains. If you travel north or south
from Naples on the fast EuroStar trains, for example,
it is much more pleasant to board at Mergellina.
In any event, the
Mergellina station is getting a face-lift. Now
it will be restored as part of an ambitious
nation-wide project called "Centostazioni" (100 Stations) which
plans to restore 103 (to be precise) train stations
throughout Italy. Mergellina is to play an expanded
role in the future of rail transport in the city. In
addition to present Metro stop and long-distance
service in all directions, it will be a major transfer
point for the new metro line coming in from
Fuorigrotta, on the other side of the Posillipo hill.
(The stop on that line will be incorporated in
an underground extension of the original Mergellina
station). The work is in progress and is due for
completion in 2006. Projections say that the station
will handle six million passengers a year.
The
original facade at Mergellina had just to the right of
the main entrance a six-foot-high plaque marking
Mussolini's opening of the station on the fifth
anniversary of Fascism. That plaque was either removed
or destroyed during the events of WW2. It will be
interesting see if they restore it. After all, the
original Fascist-era inscription on the main
post-office was restored recently. It, however, is
well above the reach of vandals with spray cans. We
shall see.
Related
items: Lamont Young,
see under "Metropolitana" in
the index
and The Architecture of
Fascism in Naples.
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