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OK, when the
music stops, each statue has to...
Confusing Statues
As a matter of
fact, there are two statues on my Corso Vitt. Eman.
II: one is a statue of the 19th-century composer Saverio Mercadante and the
other is way down at the east end of the road at
Piazza Giuseppe Mazzini, a square named for the great
political philosopher of Italian
unification. There is a very large statue in his
square, however, of someone else!—and I swear I did not know it was
someone else until I went and checked after all these
years. (I figured—square, statue. Has to be the same.
Makes sense. But, then again, I often missed Groucho’s
infamous question: Who
is buried in Grant’s Tomb?). The statue at
Piazza Mazzini is of Paolo Emilio Imbriani (photo,
above), mayor of Naples from 1870-1872. But if Imbriani is at Piazza
Mazzini, where is Mazzini? There is a bust of him
(photo, below) at the end of the street called, uh,
via Emilio Imbriani across from the Angevin Fortress! The columnist tried to finesse his way around this next one, however, because it’s embarrassing. Most Neapolitans know that the square named Piazza Nicola Amore on the wide road, Corso Umberto, used to have a prominent statue of, obviously, Nicola Amore, the mayor of Naples in the 1880s and the man behind the great urban renewal of the city, the Risanamento (during which period the road and square were built). The statue was moved, says the columnist, at the behest of Mussolini period end of sentence. Not so fast, you weasel. It was moved in 1936 so there would be sufficient space to let pass the obnoxiously large motorcade of the Duce’s wartime buddy, der Führer Adolf Schickelgruber! (I know, I know, that name was Allied propaganda. Sue me.) It worked; the motorcade, if nothing else, went well. There are even early color films of the cheering Neapolitan throngs and of piazza Nicola Amore bedecked with swastikas. They moved poor Amore way over to the west to Piazza Vittoria (she was Mr. Municipio's mistress) where he still stands, not far from a statue of Giovanni Nicotera, one of Garibaldi’s famed One Thousand. He (Nicotera) also has a street, but it’s not near his statue. Giuseppe Garibaldi obviously has a statue in Naples (and every other burg in Italy) and it is (hurray!) coterminous with the gigantic Piazza Garibaldi and even the street, Corso Garibaldi. They were taking no chances; you can go Garibaldingbats on all three right in the same place! (I’m starting to feel better.) Umberto, by the way—O he of the above-named Corso—was the second king of Italy. To honor him, there is, besides the street, also the gigantic Galleria Umberto, so surely the statue is...no?...where? Oh. Way over on via Nazario Sauro. That’s ok. It’s a nice place to stand; he looks out over the sea. The Neapolitan naval hero, Admiral Francesco Caracciolo, is the eponym for the long seaside road along the Villa Comunale. The prominent statue on that road, however, is of someone else—WW I general, Armando Diaz. He, of course, is nowhere near his street, but his spot on via Caracciolo is also a pleasant place to stand. It looks out at the sea, away from the confusion. He can stand there forever and puzzle over the fact that after he signed the armistice for Italy in the Great War as “firmato, Diaz” [“signed, Diaz”] a great many newborn Italians that year wound up being named “Firmato” by parents who figured it must have been the general’s given name. There is a gigantic monument to "Firmato"—a tall pedestal topped by Diaz astride a horse—on the sea front along via Caracciolo. The design of the monument is by Gino Cancelotti, and the bronze statue, itself, is by Francesco Nagni. The monument is nowhere near the street, via Armando Diaz, which runs by the main post-office at Piazza Matteotti (named for the Italian Socialist murdered by Fascists in 1924). Although there other tributes to both Caracciolo and Matteotti in Naples I don’t think there is a statue of either one. But you never know. |
There is
both a square and a statue dedicated to the great
Bourbon Monarch,