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The
Metropolitana
The following items
appeared on separate pages of the Around Naples
Encyclopedia on the dates indicated. They have been
consolidated here onto a single page to provide a
chronological format that is somewhat easier to
follow. There are occasional "Also see"-links to
longer entries not on this page. A map of the metro
is at number 17.
1.
Nov. 2002
That is happening at a number of the new subway
stations. The one adjacent to the archaeological
museum has—encased in plexiglass over the
entrance!—the original, splendid bronze horse's head
presented by Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-92) to
Diomede Carafa, the representative of the
Aragonese court in Naples in the late 15th
century. It had been on display in the museum,
itself; now it's in a subway station. This
approach to "art for the masses" has left some
people delighted, and others less so. 2.
Dec. 2002
Largo Lala in Fuorigrotta, site of major construction for the new train line.
Well, stations went in and the underground tunnel was built, and they even ran a test car or two down the tracks at the time, as I recall. Yet, the line never opened; it was unfinished or too poorly built to operate, and for the next decade, it just lay there gathering cobwebs below the surface of the section of town known as "Fuorigrotta". It was, in the words of the President of the Campania Region (of which Naples is the capital) and mayor of the city of Naples during the 1990s, Antonio Bassolino, who spoke about it the other day on television, a remnant of the great "tangentopoli" scandals of the early part of that decade. (That's an interesting word, translating approximately to "bribe city".) In other words, everybody was on the take, and the money to do the job right just disappeared. That appears to be changing. They have been
working on the stations, track, and tunnel for a
number of months now and current plans call for at
least part of this renovated rapid light-rail
transit line to be incorporated into the city's
transit system within two years. Finishing the
entire line will take about five years. There will
be seven or eight stations along the route, one
that will connect the extreme western zone of
Naples in the area of the stadium and new
university campus to the port of Naples at Piazza
Municipio. That is something that even the new
subway line does not do. 3.
Dec. 2002
Getting into and out of the city is another problem. There are two secondary narrow–gauge railway lines that serve the city. One is called the Circumvesuviana; it starts near the central train station and has an extensive network of stations and track to the west through the communities on the slopes of Vesuvius—the most densely populated area in Europe—and on out to the Sorrentine peninsula. The other one is called the Circumflegrea—also known as the Cumana; it, too, starts in the center of town and, as the name suggests, goes west to serve the outlying areas in the Campi Flegrei and beyond, all the way to end of the Gulf of Naples, itself, near Cuma. The latest big engineering plan involves the Cumana. As it stands now, in order to get to the first station, Soccavo, outside the city to the west, the Cumana goes through a long (2 miles) and very deep tunnel that bores beneath the entire hill of Naples that the “Vomero” section of the city rests on. Many decades ago, the Vomero was remote enough to be a vacation spot for the well–heeled; to rest up a bit in the “countryside,” you went up to Vomero. Now, of course, that part of town is as busy and congested as anywhere else in the metropolitan area; indeed, the new subway line was started in order to connect Vomero with the main downtown area. The plan in question calls for putting in another station on the Cumana line between the downtown end–of–the-line and what is now the first stop, Soccavo. That station will lie directly below the massive Vomero hill. Then they will sink a passenger elevator from the center of Vomero 100 meters down through the hill to the new station. It will be—claims the report in the paper—the deepest subway station in the world. The plan calls for connecting—by conveyor walkways for passengers—the new station with the nearby Cilea station of the new metropolitana. The theory, then, is that with a single change at that juncture, you will be able to start your trip anywhere out to the west of the city and wind up on the new subway line with its 20–some stations. All this ambition sounds like a script for an invasion of the Mole People, and I am reminded of the Spanish move in the 17th–century to prohibit anymore digging, quarrying, and burrowing beneath the city out of fear of cave–ins, which were, even then, a problem. Engineers, of course, tell us that modern methods and materials of construction will actually make the subsoil safer. But, then, engineers are used to whistling in the dark!4.
Sept. 2003
We used to joke that the reason they used that same tree all the time was that it was the only one left in Naples. That is, of course, an exaggeration, since, as I have pointed out elsewhere, there are a number of large parks in Naples: the Villa Comunale, the Floridiana, the grounds of the Capodimonte museum, and the vineyards of San Martino. Those parks don’t change the fact, however, that your average neighborhood trees, the ones that line the street in front of your house, little by little, over the years, can’t help but lose the battle with encroaching, egregious overbuilding. We need a garage—those trees go. An extra parking space or two?—chop, chop. (Forget the downright forests sacrificed to illegally built, entire blocks of flats.) Thus, I am unhappy and suspicious when I read that 60 (!) trees have been chopped down in Fuori Grotta to accommodate construction sites for the new underground train line coming in from the area of the new university and San Paolo football stadium. “New underground train line” is, of course, ridiculous. That is the train that was supposed to be up and running in 1990 for the World Cup soccer matches. Now that incompetence and bribery have been relegated to the rubbish heap of history, the train line (officially to be known as Line #6) will be finished and joined to the main lines of the metropolitana in Naples. This has meant performing quintuple by-pass surgery on the one main road, viale Augusto, that leads through that section of town, creating a labyrinth of one-way detours to get from one end of the road to the other, one mile away. Of the 30 palm trees that were there a few days ago, 8 are still there; the other 22 have been moved, but shall be returned. Sixty pines, however got the axe. The city promises that they will replaced by 94 new ones when the construction is finished. City promises—well, they are what they are.5. See NBLKFOPSJON for some fiction. Or is it? 6.
July 2005
The current state of the new Mostra station of Line 6.  (This Metro line should be called 666
and not simply 6, since they've had the Devil's own
time building it.) In any event, two things did NOT
happen in Naples in 1990. One: the World Cup soccer
matches were played in Italy that year, but Italy
did NOT win their semi-final match against Argentina
in the Naples stadium of San Paolo. There were mixed
feelings among Neapolitans about that; Naples star
and beloved poster boy, Diego Maradona, was
unfortunately playing on his national team,
Argentina, for the World Cup matches. Neapolitans
loved him, but he helped beat Italy.In spite of renovating the San Paolo stadium to conform to international standards, the city of Naples never quite finished the "other project"—the train line known as the Rapid Tram Line, supposed to have been finished in time for those matches played in Naples. It was abandoned, producing one of the juiciest corruption scandals in years in Naples. The general consensus— expressed pithily by the Man on the Street—was, "The bastards ate the money."  Using
much of the tunnel and station space completed 15
years ago, the Line 6 will go from the Mostra
d'Oltremare (Overseas Fair Grounds) in the western
part of Naples called Fuorigrotta to Piazza
Municipio in the downtown area, adjacent to the port
of Naples. The station at the Fair Grounds will also
connect to a one-stop shuttle train to the new
campus of the University of Naples at Monte
Sant'Angelo as well as to the nearby station of
Fuorigrotta; that station is a major stop on the
state railway line leading to Rome and also a stop
on the older Naples Metro that runs all the way to
the main train station downtown. The station at the
port of Naples will connect to the new Metro lines 1
and 2, which will then be up and running all the way
through town and (keep your fingers crossed) maybe
even up to the airport at Capodichino. In short, you
will then be able to get anywhere from anywhere—by
underground train.After the initial station at the Mostra, Line 6 will stop twice beneath the main thoroughfare, viale Augusto, on its way east into the city. It then tunnels beneath the Posillipo hill and stops at the other side at the Mergellina station (I know, I know—"You leave the Mergellina station 'bout a quarter- to-four." I've heard'em all.) It stops again further east at the beginning of the Villa Comunale, the long public park along the seaside, once more in the middle of the park, then swings in and makes two more stops on the way to the end of the line at Piazza Municipio. Predictions call for the stations up to and including the first stop at the Villa Comunale to be open "in 2006". (Between patted backs and crossed fingers, I am getting sore just thinking about it.) 7. mid-June 2007 I don’t know how many
optimistic articles I have read over the
years about the new Naples metro system, the
underground train lines, that the mayor of
Naples has called “…the largest ongoing
urban project in the nation…”. Well, it
certainly is big, and it certainly is
ongoing—with the latest date for opening
major sections now set at about 2010, give
or take (mostly give) a couple of years.
(Fudge factories in Naples make fudge
factors, not fudge.) The work to be done is
considerable: Piazza
Municipio at Present
8.
Oct 2007
 When
they were still finishing up this part of Line 6
of the metropolitana subway line, I complained
about the slow progress. Well, four stations are
now up (down) and running—those from Mergellina to
Fuorigrotta. It has already been called the most "useless
piece of track in the world" because, essentially, it
doubles a line of the old subway train that has
existed since the 1920s. This line will serve
almost no purpose until it is completed into the
area of the city hall and port in one direction
(that is years away!) and, in the other, up to
the Monte Sant'Angelo campus of the university.
But it's still a nice little train. There are
almost no passengers, so if you have nowhere to
go and like to ride comfortably back and forth,
this is for you.9. May 2008  For many years, the area directly in
front of the Church
of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the
Politeama theater was a dirty parking lot. City
fathers then had the fine idea to turn it into a
park with trees and benches—a little oasis in the
middle of the city. It was done and they did a
good job, and everyone liked it. Now, they've cut
down the trees (photo, right) to put in the upper
entrance to the new two-tier "Martiri" station of
the number 6 metro train line. As that line has
snaked its way east over the past few years, a lot
of trees have been removed, but they were replaced
once construction was done. That will happen
here, too, I imagine. I give it about three
years.  update Jan 2012: I was
optimistic! They won't make it by May (unless you
mean 2013). Yesterday I stood behind the fence at
about where that second tree-stump in the middle
is (photo, above right). I shot down over the
fence and the entire square in front of the Church
of Santa Maria
degli Angeli is still an open pit (photo,
right). The church and square are located well
above the main street level, which is where the
main entrance to the station will eventually be.
The pit is now down to about that point. Scale can
be measured roughly by looking at the earth-moving
equipment parked at the upper right at the
bottom of the pit. It has a cab where a single
human operator sits. The entire Martiri station,
of course, will have to connect to the trains
running underground, which means, obviously, a
third level way down where the tracks are. In
theory, there is an earth boring piece of
equipment (see #14, below) that left the
Mergellina station 'bout a quarter to four in
September of 2009 burrowing its way towards Arco
Mirelli, which still looks pretty much as it does
in #16 (below, from Nov. 2010), although most of
the important work is done where you can't see it.
I think the tunnel-gnawing monster must be
somewhere between Arco Mirelli and S. Pasquale by
now. If it has taken a wrong turn, it's about
half-way to Capri.10. July
2008
The number 1 line
of the new Naples Metro underground train line
is currently open to Piazza Dante. There are two
stations left to finish in order to connect to
the Piazza Municipio station at the port; one is
the Toledo station (which looks almost finished
to me) and the last one is the Municipio
station, itself (which is still a mess). In any
event, the remaining tunnels are now finished
and, yesterday, were declared open and sound.
The Municipio station is a mammoth project since
it will have to receive traffic from the number
6 line currently burrowing its way along the
Riviera di Chiaia on its way to the port. A
paper reports today that the ETCC (Estimated
Time of Complete Choo-Choo-hood) on all this is
2011.
11. Oct
2008
 It
just a matter of days, but so is the age of the
earth, itself. Recent construction on the number 6
metro line, inching its way along the north side of
the Villa Comunale, has
produced an interesting explanatory billboard put up
by the city, presumably to placate the drivers
caught in the traffic squeeze caused by the
construction of the section from the Arco Mirelli
station to the San Pasquale station (map, item 9,
above). There is a helpful map that also tells you
when they started the work (October, 2007) and also
how long the job is expected to take--expressed in
days (!). "Gee,
only 1977 days. That's not so bad, dear. Wait a
minute--clickety-click, carry the 2--that's 5
years!"
12. Jan
2009
 There
is another delay in the construction of the new metropolitana
underground train line. Three crucial stations that
remain to be opened are the ones at Piazza Municpio,
Piazza della Borsa and via Roma; they will provide a
straight shot from almost anywhere in western Naples
to the train station at Piazza Garibaldi. Piazza
Municipio is what it is—a gigantic undertaking, but
it is proceeding. I give it three years. The other
two, however, have just been "sealed" by the city
over concerns for public health. Waste water from
the construction sites has found its way—this,
according to the city—into the aqueduct that
supplies the immediate area. Site engineers deny
this and have promised a quick resolution.
 A
VERY (!) large tunnel boring machine (nicknamed la talpa—mole)
is spending three nights in late August (from 11 pm
to 6 am) being transported on surface streets from
the port of Naples to Mergellina. It will then dig
into the subsoil to complete the tunnel for the
Number 6 metro line that will link Mergellina with
Piazza Municipio, a distance of about two miles.
Streets are closed to normal traffic as the device
(broken down into three pieces) moves along the
seaside, through a tunnel to Fuorigrotta where it
will then descend onto the tracks of the already
in-service portion of the tunnel and proceed along
the track to Mergellina, the recently finished and
current last stop on the #6 line. Then it will start
eating 10 meters a day for as long as it takes to
put a tunnel beneath the remaining five stations
(already under construction). It’ll take a
while. 15. Oct 2009 The regional Campania government has just allotted 228 million euros to finish large sections of the new metropolitana, including the airport station at Capodichino airport (aka Naples International Airport). The station is supposed to be in service sometime in 2013, but that date is optimistic. In any event it will be—according to published literature on the subject—the only metro station in Italy on the premises (well, beneath the premises) of a major airport. (It is also the largest ongoing construction project in Italy, with the exception of the nation-wide high-speed train system currently being built.) The airport station will be one link in the chain of stations that lead away from the main train station, up and out along the long Secondigliano corridor (other stations on that stretch are now under construction) to the terminus at Piscinola in Scampia (already in service as the terminus of the already functioning Vomero section of the line that leads into the city); that will complete the giant metro circle around the entire city, linking all points to the port, the train station, and the airport.16. Nov 2010  The
adjacent photo shows the current state of
construction of the station of the number 6 metro
line, located at the west end of the villa Comunale. The
station will be called "Arco Mirelli" (map in item
9, above). The line has made progress in the last
few years and is open, coming from the west in Fuori
Grotta, to the Mergellina train station. The
construction of the last few stations on the way
into the center of the city at the port is painfully
difficult and slow. The buildings on the left in the
photo are at street level along the Riviera di
Chiaia. The trees on the right are in the park
across the street, the above-mentioned villa Comunale.
That park, itself, is on the seaside and is at
sea-level. It was built on reclaimed sand and swamp
in the 1700s and reenforced during the urban renewal
of Naples, the Risanamento,
in 1900. The station is, obviously, below sea level.
The train tunnel, itself, currently being drilled
out beneath the street and park with a mammoth
Chunnel-munching talpa
(mole) [photo in item 14, above], is even deepr than
the station. In other words, really below
sea level!17. Nov 2010
18. Feb. 2011
 The station shown as
"Università" on the above map (the first
yellow station to the east (right) after
"Municipio") is now complete at least as far as
above-ground construction is concerned. The square,
itself, is called Piazza
della Borsa (Stock Exchange). It was torn
up for years: first, the digging, then the huge
open-pit, then the gigantic concrete containers
waiting to unload—all of this surrounded by screens
and fences to keep sidewalk superintendents like
Yours Truly at bay. At least that is all gone now.
The results are seen in this photo (right).The statue in the center of the square is of Vittorio Emanuele II and is the one that was erected at Piazza Municipio in 1900 and, indeed, was there until removed when similar construction started on that Metro station some years ago (see item 7, above). I don't know if Victor has found a new permanent home at this University station. He replaces the statue that was there originally, the Neptune Fountain, certainly one of the most travel-weary bits of stone in the world. I can't imagine that when it is all over, they'll transfer Victor back to Piazza Municipio and Neptune back here. Well, I can imagine it, but I hope they don't. That means we'll need some new sculpture for Piazza Municipio. Where's my chisel?! The University station, of course, is not open yet and will not be for some time, since underground work is going on both sides of it (at the Municipio station and the Duomo station, the last one that lies between this one and the main train station at Piazza Garibaldi) i.e. tunnels are still being dug and track laid. But it's a start—which is what I said many years ago. 19. Mar. 27, 2011 Dotted lines
are under construction.
Item #17, above, has a complete map.  The
above two items need some clarification. The new
University station mentioned in the item directly
above is indeed open! While I wasn't looking and
without actually telling anyone they were going to
do it (that is, not indicating it on any of the
published maps of the new metro system), the city
parenting persons decided to build another short
stretch of underground track! It opened the other
day, and I have just returned from my first ride.
"It" is the "University Shuttle Train" with trains
zipping back and forth between the station at Piazza
Dante and the University Station (as shown by the
solid red line between those two points in the
image, right—the University station is at Piazza della Borsa,
shown in the photo in item 18, above). Students
coming into Piazza Dante can now just get on the
shuttle to the University instead of hiking across
town. The shuttle by-passes the unfinished stations
at Toledo (scheduled to open at the end of 2011) and
Municipio—the main port of Naples (scheduled to open
when hell freezes over).20. An entry from Jan. 2012 is entered as an update to number 9 (above).  21. Jan 31, 2012: The square
named Piazza Carità has returned to its
wide-open and pleasant state about halfway up via
Toledo (via Roma) on the way to Piazza Dante. For
three years it was a torn-up mess—a loose collection
of cranes and earth-moving equipment, concrete
slabs, fences to keep sidewalk supers from standing
too close and traffic that could barely move past
the site. Everyone knew that it was "something for
the metro" but not
any kind of a station (since they didn't put
in passenger stairways from the square). The square
is, in fact between
two stations—Dante (open) and Toledo (not yet
open) (see map at #19, above), and the construction
was for the purpose of installing a very large
ventilation shaft. That is now complete. The square
has its benches and palm trees back, and once again
displays its 1930s
architecture and post-WWII monument to Salvo d'Acquisto. The
photo (above) is from this week.22. April 15, 2012. I got fooled again. I thought they were going to open the new Toledo station, but I was wrong. See this misc. item. Also see the Little Choo-choo item, below.) Also see airport station & The Little Choo-choo that needed a dictionary |
Yet
another train line, and if this one ever gets up
and running, it will be a boon for the city. Back
in 1990, when Naples hosted some of the games for
the World Cup in soccer, they were to build a
"rapid tram" line from town out to the San Paolo
stadium. Such a line would have been an enormous
asset—even after the games—to the city's
struggling transit system. 
Naples
certainly doesn’t lack ambitious engineering
plans. The decades-long (and still going on) new metropolitana—subway—is
the classic case. Little by little, that is
winding its way towards completion, and the
sections that are already in service have made
getting around the city much easier. 
There
is a famous postcard of the Bay of Naples seen
from the Posillipo hill above Mergellina. It’s the
classic view: the waters in front of the Villa
Comunale and the seaside road, via
Caracciolo, the Castel dell’Ovo, and
the double peaks of Mt. Vesuvius and its
companion, Mt. Somma, in the background with the
beginnings of the Sorrentine peninsula spreading
to the south. The photo is usually taken such that
there is a famous, solitary Mediterranean pine
tree in the foreground. 
