TURIN — In Scampia, a northern suburb of Naples, three people have died and 13 have been injured — including seven children in serious conditions, two of them at risk of life — following the collapse of a raised walkway on July 22. The event has been closely followed by Italian media, not only because of the loss of human lives it entailed, but also because of where it happened.
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The walkway was on the fourth floor of one of seven residential buildings known as Le Vele di Scampia — Scampia’s sails, due to their peculiar shape. A quick Google search shows why these buildings have become famous not only in Naples, but also in Italy and the rest of the world. The Guardian describes Le Vele as a “symbol” of Naples’ “Camorra’s past;” users on Reddit ask if it is “too dangerous” to visit the area; while TikTok is filled with videos defining it as “Italy’s most dangerous neighborhood.”
Roberto Saviano, a Neapolitan investigative journalist who joined the Camorra undercover — and is now forced to live with a security detail because of threats to his life from the criminal organization — wrote in his famous book Gomorra that as of 2004 the northern suburbs of Naples, including Scampia, were characterized by the highest ratio of drug dealers per inhabitants in Europe, and one of the five highest in the world.
On Le Vele, Saviano wrote that they represented the “rotten symbol of architectural delirium… that nothing could do to oppose the construction of the drug trafficking machine that has become innervated in the social fabric of this part of the world.”
All of this was true, but it is now part of Scampia’s past. Today, the neighborhood is seen as a model in the fight against criminal organizations in other districts of Naples and the Italian peninsula.
What it could have been, and what it became
Le Vele was built between 1962 and 1975, and was part of a broader housing project that involved other areas of the southern Italian city as well. They were designed by Francesco Di Salvo, an Italian architect that was inspired by Le Corbusier and the Existenzminimum architectural movement, which maintained that private spaces should be reduced to the bare minimum, therefore maximizing the extension of common areas.
The original project, consisting of seven buildings spread over an area of 115 hectares, envisioned residential housing units — where hundreds of families were to integrate and create a community —, large thoroughfares and green areas between the various buildings, in what was conceptualized as a true model city.
But this is not what it turned out to be.
Naples-based online newspaper Vesuviolive.it writes that the “failure to realize” these common areas “was one of the causes of [the project’s] resounding decay,” while comparing it to an almost identical complex on the French Côte d’Azur, where an apartment can cost up to several millions of euros.
In Villeneuve-Loubet — the city between Nice and Marseille where the complex is located — the common areas were successfully created, but this is not the only difference between the two. Other circumstances contributed to make Scampia a Camorra stronghold for decades.
The role of the state
Another event accounting for the failure of the project was the 1980 Irpinia earthquake, the epicenter of which was about 120 km away from Naples. In addition to killing 2734 people, more than 400,000 people lost their homes because of the earthquake, and the institutions did little to assist them.
Some were sheltered in containers set up in areas filled with asbestos, and even though this solution was only supposed to be temporary, they were forced to live in these conditions until as recently as 2022. Others decided to take matters into their own hands to avoid homelessness: many moved to unoccupied apartments inside Le Vele, turning the model city into a large squat.
These concrete blocks filled with social malaise proved to be the ideal environment for criminality to thrive in.
The rest of the apartments were occupied by people coming from the historical center of Naples — a tourist attraction today, but one of the poorest districts of the city back then — whom the authorities moved to Scampia’s residential complex following the earthquake and the destruction it caused in the city, where dilapidated and run-down buildings were and still are the norm.
A Camorra stronghold
These blocks of concrete filled with social malaise proved to be the ideal environment for criminality to thrive in. Gardens were taken over by drug dealers, driveways became tracks for clandestine races and building hallways served as meeting places for thieves and petty criminals.
Over time, the neighborhood and common areas of the complex became infamous places, sites of illicit trafficking, and Le Vele became a symbol of Scampia’s decay. This image was reinforced by popular culture as well, as Saviano’s book was eventually adopted into a 2008 movie and a TV series — which was distributed worldwide — that ran from 2014 until 2021, both named after the book.
One family, the Di Lauro, ruled unchallenged over Scampia and the northern neighborhoods of Naples until the early 2000s, setting up in the residential complex a true stronghold for their criminal activities. Then, feuds inside the clan set off a first neighborhood war in 2004, causing more than 70 deaths in one year. It was followed by two more feuds in 2010 and 2012, both bringing fear and death to Scampia and the northern suburbs of Naples.
Moving forward
Today, Le Vele is slowly becoming part of a past that Scampia is trying to leave behind. Four of the seven buildings were demolished between 1997 and 2020, and two more will be demolished in the coming years. Only one of the seven original buildings — the one interested by the accident on July 22 — will stay, but it will change radically, just like the area surrounding it.
In 2022, a building of the University of Naples’ medicine faculty was built where, less than 10 years before, the Camorra ruled undisputedly. The requalification of the area, part of a project of the municipality of Naples named “ReStart Scampia,” will be funded thanks to €150 million from the EU. It will see the construction of 433 new self-sufficient housing units, spaces dedicated to urban farming, a park, schools and more.
It’s been a long time since Scampia ceased to be “southern Italy’s largest drug marketplace.”
In January this year, the construction site that will lead to the demolition of two more buildings and the rehabilitation of the last one was officially opened. Italian daily Il Manifesto wrote that “the Camorra war that has counted dozens of deaths since the early 2000s… is over,” while it’s been a long time since Scampia ceased to be “southern Italy’s largest drug marketplace.”
“In turn, in a district of 40,000 inhabitants like Scampia, considered the emblem of Italy’s difficult suburbs, today there are 120 active associations and fifty recovered public spaces, with urban gardens and self-managed parks,” symbols of how far the neighborhood has come.
