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The Sedili
of Naples
 There is
a small square named sedil
Capuano in Naples and also a street named sedile di Porto,
both in the heart of the old city. Unlike many names in
Neapolitan toponymy, they have
not changed in centuries. They shed some light on the
historic administrative structure of the city since they
are both named for something that no longer exists—the sedile. A sedile (plural: sedili) was a
medieval town-hall for an area in the city. Earlier,
when the Greeks set up the city, the various quarters
were called fratie, and
at various times over later centuries they were also
called tocchi,
teatri, platee, portici, and, in
Neapolitan dialect, segge
(in which we also see the modern Italian, seggio, today a
polling place for elections). In any case, they were
seats of local government; these were the places where
the nobles and other VIP's (bankers and merchants) met
to take care of city business, at least for their part
of the city.
 There is not much documentation about the
administration of the city in the so-called Dark Ages, but one presumes
that such units must have survived at least partially
since the city itself survived. By the time of the
arrival of the Normans and the
founding of the Kingdom of Sicily (which became the
Kingdom of Naples), the existence of the sedili is
documented. Their function was officially recognized by
the Hohenstaufen rulers of
the kingdom around the middle of the 1200s.
  In
all, there were 30 such major and minor town halls in
the medieval city. There is a graphic display of the
coats of arms of the seven major sedili above the
entrance to the museum and archaeological site at the
church of San Lorenzo at the exact geographical center
of the old city (photo, right, and number 28 on this map).The seven major sedili were
(starting with the red one at the upper left and moving
counter-clockwise): Capuana, Montagna, Forcella, Popolo,
Portanova, Porto and Nilo. (The larger symbol in the
middle at the top was a royal crest.)
 The other, minor sedili were often named for the
prominent noble family in the quarter (for example, Calanti), or a
local church (SS.
Apostoli), or a nearby city gate (Porta di S. Genuario).
Some of them were truly ancient; the sedile of Arco is said to
have been named for a Greek magistrate before the city
was Roman—evidence, perhaps, of the durability of these
districts even during the times for which we have no
direct documentation. These administrative units served
the city well in the Middle Ages and had a certain
amount of automony; that is, if you came into the city
with merchandise, say, at the sedile of Porto, you paid duty to that
sedile.
 The
names of the major sedili
are often self-explanatory: porto (near the harbor); montagna (mountain:
the highest point in the city, i.e., the NE corner and
site of the old Greek acropolis);
Portanova (new
gate), etc. Some are less so: Nilo (Nile, as in the river, so-called
because of the presence of Egyptians in the "Alexandrian
quarter" in the ancient Greek city); Forcella, a fork or
pitchfork, yes, but here the Y-shaped symbol of the sedile apparently
derives from the form of the Greek capital letter, upsilon, the symbol
of an ancient Greek academy in the area.
 The coats of arms are similarly
self-explanatory or not: the letter P on the crest of
the 'popolo' sedile
makes sense, as do the three hills on the crest for montagna; and the
crest for portanova
looks a little like a gate, I suppose. But the horses on
nilo and capuana? More
research is needed, as they say. Popolo was the most
"democratic" since the word, itself, means 'people'. It
was apparently somewhat of an umbrella unit, not
administering a particular part of the city, but rather
representing the classes with no voice of their own
(somewhat like the Third Estate in the old French
Estates-General). That sedile was located more or less where
modern-day piazza Nicola Amore is today—that is, the
intersection of via Duomo and Corso Umberto I.
 Under the
Angevins in the 1400s, many of the minor sedili were
abolished or incorporated into larger ones. Then, during
the period of the Spanish vice-realm (1500-1700), the
seven major sedili
each sent representatives to an assembly called the San
Lorenzo Tribunal. It functioned somewhat as a modern
city council does and met on the premises of San
Lorenzo; hence, the display still on that facade—the
building was a city hall. That assembly was abolished by
King Ferdinand IV in 1800, shortly after the failed
attempt by revolutionaries to install a French-inspired
Neapolitan Republic. The sedili were never
reinstalled and in the course of the 19th and 20th
centuries were replaced by more modern divisions of
urban Naples.
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