NEAPOLIS ROCK FESTIVAL: RECUPERO DI UN’AREA INDUSTRIALE ATTRAVERSO UN FESTIVAL MUSICALE (RECLAIMING AN INDUSTRIAL AREA THROUGH A MUSIC FESTIVAL)

COMMISSIONED BY: Comune di Napoli

YEARS: 1997-1998-1999-2000

Neapolis Rock Festival was the first music festival in Italy to combine the aggregation potential of a youth happening with the environmental reclamation of an evocative, and at the same time critical, industrial area like the abandoned Italsider steel plant in Bagnoli.

The idea for the Neapolis Rock Festival began in ’95 and became a reality in ’97 in collaboration with the City of Naples, “Bagnoli S.p.A.” (IRI – Institute for Industrial Reconstruction –  the company responsible for the decision to close the plant), and the crucial participation of private sponsors.

There were two important factors:

• Identify the Neapolis as a real productive idea from the start. It created jobs, it had a cause and objectives.
• Turn on a bright spotlight on the future of one of the largest abandoned industrial areas in Italy, located in a beautiful setting with ambitions for tourism.

An important musical event that for four years reinterpreted an area with deep roots in history. The festival unearthed opportunities, proposed solutions for the future, and contributed in consolidating the direction for redevelopment in the area, compatible with the desires of the municipal administration to develop a “low-density settlement (…) where open spaces, equipped and not, prevail over those covered by buildings.”