entry Jan
2010
The
First Polyclinic
Hospital in Naples
or
Progress:1 — Culture:
0.00...something
The
southern entrance to
the
First Polyclinic Hospital
First Polyclinic Hospital
Today,
if you speak of the "hospital zone" of Naples, you
mean the hill area in the high Vomero, where major
hospitals started to be built in the 1920s. That part of
town was not even in
town in the 1920s; it was where you went to get away from town.
Today, it is urbanized and overbuilt beyond belief. The
area now hosts a number of hospitals, from the Cardarelli and the Monaldi
(from the late 1920s and late 1930s, respectively) to the
mammoth Second Polyclinic Hospital complex, built in the
1970s. That area is today very much in town, connected to
the outside world and accessible by the Naples ring-road,
the tangenziale
highway.
Yet,
until the late 1890s most hospitals in Naples were under
the auspices of religious orders. That is, many churches
came with adjacent monasteries or convents that were
dedicated, at least partially, to caring for the sick.
They have a long history in the city. One of the first
such facilities was Sant’Eligio al Mercato,
founded under Charles II of Anjou in 1270. Sant'Antonio abate is also quite
early, from 1313. Though many of these ancient places are
now gone, a number of them are still in existence and now
part of the modern health-care infrastructure of the city;
among these are the Vecchio Pellegrini,
the Incurabili, the Annunziata,
the Ascalesi,
and San Gennaro dei Poveri.
Between
the very old and very new, however, is the case of the
First Polyclinic Hospital of the University of Naples.
Though now called "the old polyclinic" by locals, it was
once the new
jewel of health care in southern Italy. It was part of the
urban renewal of Naples, called the Risanamento,
between 1885 and 1915, and was just as much a part of
Naples for the new 20th century as all the new roads, slum
clearance and classy hotels of the same period. The
hospital was inaugurated on January 13, 1908 and
immediately hailed as a world-class medical school cum teaching
hospital.
The
First Polyclinic took ten years to build and was
accompanied by controversy, since construction meant
cutting deep into the historical and social fabric of the
old city. But that was what the Risanamento was doing all over the city
at the time, and the western end of the historic center
could no more escape than could other parts of the city.
(Which is to say that you may still like to sing Santa Lucia, but the
old quarter of Santa Lucia is now beneath tons of
land-fill and hotels.) In the satellite shot (right), the
lonely-looking squat building at the very bottom in the
center is what is left of the church of the Croce di Lucca.* The parking lot above it is where the
Carmelite convent of Croce di Lucca used to stand.
The four buildings directly above the parking lot were the
new hospital clinics, each either 3 or 4 stories high and
all containing beds for patients and lecture rooms for the
medical school. They are on land once occupied by the
convent of S. Maria
della Sapienza (the church of which still stands
on the left of the four buildings, fronting on the
diagonal street, via
Costantinopoli). Above the four buildings, across
the street, are more ex-monastic premises. including St. Andrea delle Dame (the large
square building at the top with the tree-filled
courtyard),not torn down but incorporated into the new
hospital.
The
controversy centered on Croce di Lucca. The loss of the
convent, itself, was a given. Most monasteries and
convents in Naples had been definitively closed by
Napoleon and then definitively the second time (!) by the
anti-clerical rulers of the new united Italy in the 1860s.
Most of the buildings were converted to secular use, yet
usually the churches were saved. That is, today you can go
to church at San Giacomo right next to the city hall,
which used to be the San Giacomo monastery. The same is
true of the church of the Spirito Santo, next to what used
to be the giant Spirito Santo monastery, now the new
architectural department of the University of Naples, and
so forth. (See this link
for more on the ex-monasteries of Naples.)
Croce di
Lucca was a special case, however, according to Benedetto Croce and other Kulturträger in
Naples of the 1890s. The hospital builders had spared the
church of S. Maria
della Sapienza, taking only the convent, but they
wanted all of
Croce di Lucca, both convent and church. Those who wanted
to save the church pleaded their case in Croce's journal Napoli
Napolissima. In 1903, when the construction
was at the halfway mark, Croce, himself, reminded the
builders that destroying the church had not been part of
the original plan; yet, the builders went ahead and lopped
off 20 feet of the church to enlarge the southern
entrance. They obviously wanted the whole area for a
square in front of the entrance at the junction of the
main east-west via dei
Tribunali (running along the bottom of the photo,
above) and via del Sole,
the north-south road that ran down along the side of the
new hospital buildings. As late as one week before the
opening of the hospital, Croce was still writing in il Mattino (Jan. 5,
1908) to save what was left of the church. His column was
answered by a gentleman who said, "It would be nice if we
could save everything that is old while we build the new,
but we can't." (That is a leitmotif in ALL discussions of urban
expansion and renewal in Naples.)
They
saved some of Croce di Lucca, but it was a hollow victory.
The church and convent had been put up in the mid-1550s
and a century later were turned into one of the splendors
of the Neapolitan baroque by the great Francesco Antonio Picchiati.
What was left after the hospital was finished was an
anomalous and anonymous truncated building. The church of
Croce di Lucca was "deconsecrated" many years ago and is
now no more than an historical marker. Most of the
considerable art treasures have been transferred or have
simply disappeared, either lost or stolen. The building is
under the auspices of the hospital, which uses it for
assemblies of one kind or another. The hospital never got
the spacious square, but they didn't leave much of a
church, either. You can go in and see what's left.
* Croce di Lucca. The unusual name refers to the Cross of Lucca, a particular crucifix in the Cathedral of Lucca, the town in Tuscany. The Carmelites in Naples venerated that object and dedicated the church and monastery to it. It has nothing to do with Luke the Evangelist ('Luca' in Italian).
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