 The
Palazzo of Sangro
di Casacalenda is the building that closes
the southern side of the square of San Domenico Maggiore in
the historic center of Naples (#16 on this map). It was
commissioned by Lucio di Sangro, the duke of
Casacalenda and was built in the second half of the
1700s; the construction was started by Mario
Gioffredo and finished by Luigi
Vanvitelli.
Any building from the mere 1700s in the old city
obviously was built on top of something else, and
such is the case with the Palazzo Casacalenda. In
order for the duke to build his home, he had to
first remove what was left of a paleo-Christian church on the
site, that of Santa
Maria della Rotonda. Adjacent and somewhat
earlier construction on the large San Domenico plague column in the
center of the square also revealed the remnants of
ancient walls of the city, of a city gate named
Porta Puteolana [still the adjective for the modern
town of Pozzuoli], and
of a presumed temple to the Roman goddess, Vesta. In
1922, construction to widen via Mezzocannone,
the road that comes up from the port area on the
east end of Palazzo Casacalenda made it necessary to
lop off an entire part of the building.
(Before that, the square could not be accessed on
that street by vehicular traffic.)
There are still frescoes within the Palazzo
Casacalenda by Fedele Fischetti
(1734-1789), a Neapolitan painter now regarded as
somewhat of a minor artist, but whose works
nevertheless adorn a number of sites in the area,
including the Capodimonte
Palace, the Royal
Palace, and the Palace
of Caserta. As is the case with many other
large buildings in the historic center, it is
difficult to stand back and look at this large
classical facade and think that the building was at
one time the residence of a single family, but it
was. In the immediate area on the square, some of
the buildings now house university spaces and some,
such as Palazzo Casacalenda, are given over to small
shops at street level with the upper stories
subdivided into private apartments.
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