Palace of Arts of Naples

Roccella Palace- PAN

Carafa Palace of Roccella is a monumental Palace located in the Chiaia district of Naples. The 18th-century building rose externally to the walls of the city as a villa-farm. In 1667, the owner, Francesco of Sangro Prince of St. Severo, donated the villa-palace to his son-in-law, Don Giuseppe Carafa. In the palace Ippolita Cantelmo Stuart, wife of Don Vincenzo Maria III Carafa, liven it up with a famous literary lounge. In 1717, the branch of the Carafa family, the Princes of Roccella and the Marquis of Castelvetere, bought it and the renovation was entrusted to the local architect from the Vaccaro School, Luca Vecchione, who decided to rearrange the building to a noble urban residence. The work lasted long and only in 1842, the neoclassical facade was completed. The façade was redesigned according to the criteria of symmetry and was joined by two ground floors destined for workshops. In the nineteenth century, it assumed today's appearance with the addition of the third floor, the open atrium and the patio on the garden; at that time, the palace counted over forty-five rooms lavishly furnished and rich in valuable paintings. When Via dei Mille Street was opened in 1885, some of the premises were demolished and some of the smaller buildings and some shops attached to the palace were found on the opposite side of the road. After long years of abandonment, in 1964, entrepreneur Mario Ottieri attempted to demolish it and to replace it with one of his palaces that had already been erected throughout the city. However, although in one night they destroyed all the stuccoes on the facade as well as the portal in the pipeline, he did not succeed to demolish it all due to the residents' fair opposition. In 1984, the City of Naples decided to acquire it, but only after eight years long litigation, it became the Documentation Centre for Contemporary Arts. In the mid-1980s, the restoration of the property started again and it was definitively completed in 2004 with the rename of the building to the Palace of the Arts of Naples (simply known as PAN). It opened to the public on 26th March of the same year; the building houses the current contemporary art museum PAN.
Project Prof. Arch. Ermanno Guida
Works Director Ing. Gaetano Giacchetti