"The Long Course for the Collaborative Regeneration of the St. Vincent's Pier of the Port of Naples"

The San Vincenzo Pier, to the right of today's Maritime Station, has stretched out into the sea of Naples for centuries. At its end, the statue of San Gennaro welcomes those who arrive from the sea and greets those who leave, as he did with generations of travelers and migrants headed for the Americas. It is a place-threshold, intimate and collective, capable of guarding deep memories and, at the same time, opening its gaze to the future. Today the Pier appears as an empty space with potential yet to be fulfilled: a symbolic gateway where urban regeneration projects, social imaginations and the desires of a city that wants to rediscover its relationship with the sea are intertwined.

OnTuesday, Dec. 9, 2025 in the Hall of the Barons of the Maschio Angioino at 5 p.m., the book "The Long Route for the Collaborative Regeneration of the San Vincenzo Pier of the Port of Naples" will be presented. Mayor of Naples Gaetano Manfredi opens the meeting. Speakers include Laura Valente, coordinator of Naples 2500 Years, Marella Santangelo, director of the Department of Architecture, and Edoardo Cosenza, councillor for infrastructure, who will talk about their experience in promoting, researching and intervening in the use of the San Vincenzo Pier and more generally the livability of the Neapolitan waterfront.

The guests will talk with the authors of the text: the FMSV - Friends of Molo San Vincenzo, aka Caterina Arcidiacono and Fortuna Procentese of the Department of Humanities, Alessandro Castagnaro of the Department of Architecture, Umberto Masucci of the Propeller Club and Massimo Clemente of ITC CNR.

A long, intense and passionate journey that the FMSVs undertook to return the St. Vincent Pier to the city. A book, published with a synergistic action of Paparo Editori and Fedoa Press of Ateneo Federico II, which traces the goals of the effort, the methodologies adopted, and the results achieved.

Studies, projects, listening to citizens' wishes, building an institutional network with the City of Naples, the Navy and the Port System Authority of the Central Tyrrhenian Sea have been the actions pursued over the years. Students, female students from psychology degree programs, coordinated by Fortuna Procentese, director of the Community Psychology Lab at the Federico II University, joined the various experts and stakeholders involved in the enterprise and applied the methodologies of community psychology to activate a virtuous process of participation aimed at raising awareness of the potential of the Pier.

It has been a far from simple navigation, made of tenacity, dialogue, patience and trust, testifying to a concrete example of inter-institutional co-creation, a possible best practice in the relationship between city, port and institutions. The Dec. 9 meeting does not end a journey that began nearly a decade ago: it recounts it, in order to make it shareable, replicable, and continuable. In particular, it gives an account of the journey of citizens, students, and researchers to raise awareness of the potential of the Pier for the well-being and livability of the city. The initiative supports the belief that the St. Vincent Pier will soon return to being experienced, traversed, and loved by those who arrive, those who stay, and those who return.