Palazzo De Laurentiis

by Massimo Visone

Palazzo de Laurentiis is located in the oldest core of the historic center, downstream of the decumanus inferior (Spaccanapoli), at the crossroads with the street that descended from the Roman market (below San Lorenzo Maggiore) to the Sellaria, an elongated mid-15th-century square coveted by togates, merchants and financiers, later cut off by the Risanamento.
In modern times, as the city expanded toward the harbor, the main decumanus shifted south to today's Via San Biagio dei Librai, as attested by the monumental headquarters of the Monte di Pietà (1597-1603), to which Palazzo de Laurentiis is adjacent.
The proximity to one of the city's main ‘banks’ meant that over time the Monte di Pietà acquired the building and connected it functionally: a relationship that began in the 1700s and ended in 1993, with the sale by the Banco di Napoli — which arose in the French decade from the merger of public banks — to the University of Naples Federico II.
Today, Palazzo de Laurentiis, together with another one adjacent to it located next to the Monastery of Saints Severinus and Sossio (now the State Archives), is home to the Department of Social Sciences.
The two buildings make up a large part of an entire block of the ancient city.
The insula is bordered on the north by the decumanus, on which a third building of another property is located; laterally by two hinges, corresponding to vico Monte di Pietà, with the entrance to the Department and the Carrese gate of the Benedictine monastery, and vico Figurari; finally, a stretch of road to the rear of Monte di Pietà hints at what the southern limit was, before being incorporated by the building expansion.
The main palace consists of four floors, while the other building has three, raised at different times.
Sources identify the first as the ‘palatial house’ of lawyer Francesco Maria de Laurentiis, purchased by Monte di Pietà in 1728.
It is not noted whether engineer Casimiro Vetromile was the author of the project or only the assistant to its rearrangement, but with such work the building took on its present architectural appearance.
The Mount used the building as a dwelling; in 1732 it was decided to place the checkroom and pawnshop there.
In 1758 a covered causeway was built to replace a movable bridge; in 1788 there was also the archives, damaged by fire in 1786.
The second building is smaller, and belonged in the first half of the 18th century to Alfonso Capano, who had purchased it from Duke Sanseverino di San Donato.
The palatial house remained with the Capanos until 1824, when the Banco delle Due Sicilie bought its ruins to rebuild the ground floor (1829), six large rooms on the second floor (1836) and then eight more rooms (1839-1840).
Authors of the plans were Carlo Praus, for the first two floors, and Cesare Cardona (from 1855), for the second, perhaps having frames and windows made similar to those of Palazzo de Laurentiis, to make the facades of the complex homogeneous, as seen today.
At the same time, the variety of interior vaulted ceilings suggests the early formal and functional differentiation of the constructions.
The palace shows eighteenth-century string courses, moldings and cornices, a long balcony in the courtyard and three staircases all in piperno; more interesting is the staircase that opens to the north, with its magnificent elevation on vico Figurari, while the other staircases are more ordinary.

From the volume "Passeggiando per la Federico II" (second updated edition) edited by Alessandro Castagnaro - photographs by Roberto Fellicò - FedOAPress