Palazzo Latilla

by Francesca Capano

Palazzo Latilla today houses classrooms-laboratories, teaching spaces, the MAED centre of the Department of Architecture and the CITTAM and Urban/Eco interdepartmental centres.
The eighteenth-century building is of great historical and architectural interest, which is why it was allocated to the Faculty of Architecture in 1984.
The area on which our building stands became part of the intra-moenia territories following the urban addition of Don Pedro de Toledo.
In the mid-sixteenth century, the region was undeveloped and characterised by vegetable gardens, as shown in the Dupérac-Lafréry city view (1566).
The large, irregular plot with a few buildings is bounded by Via Toledo, the extension of the Decumano Inferior, a small street which can be traced back to today's Via Pellegrini, and by the north-western walls that follow the bastion of the Holy Spirit.
In Alessandro Baratta's view (1627, 1629, 1670, 1679), the nearby Spirito Santo complex has a similar appearance to the present one.
The Pignatelli di Monteleone family transformed the area, establishing the Archconfraternity of the Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims and parcelling out the land they owned.
Nonetheless, behind the rampart and along the stretch of wall, a green area remained.
In these gardens, the 'casa palazziata' de Ruggiero was built between the end of the 17th century and the early 1700s.
This building can certainly be dated to before 1722, the year of the legal dispute between Marquis Giovanni de Ruggiero, judge of the Grand Court of the Vicariate, and Nicola Antonio di Gaeta, Duke of San Nicola, owner of the bordering plots of land.
In 1754, Ferdinando Latilla, councillor of the Royal Chamber of Santa Chiara, purchased the de Ruggiero property.
Restructuring of the building began immediately, as evidenced by the request to the Tribunale delle Fortificazioni, Mattonata e Acqua (September 1754) to use a portion of public land, adjacent to the road opened by the Trinità dei Pellegrini, and a section of wall, by then obsolete.
Mario Gioffredo was the architect designer.
The work carried out until 1758 made the palace suitable for Latilla's living and decorating needs.
The main front of the palace was in relation to the entrance of the grandiose Palazzo Spinelli di Tarsia, whose garden was overlooked by the noble flat.
However, the work continued, and two more courtyard bodies were added to the original palace, now the DiARC headquarters.
The result was a large building – influenced by the irregular plot and the height of the ground – that laps against the street, built close to the walls with a continuous curtain wall.
The massive, high façade is characterised on the ground floor by three portals and piperno-framed bays; thin stringcourses limit the upper floors, which feature balconies alternating with windows.
This monotonous design results from the reiteration of the scheme originally proposed for Latilla's first stately palace.
This is characterised by the courtyard with its open staircase, an adaptation of 18th-century Neapolitan staircases to the limited space the architect had available.
Latilla's thinking can be seen in its early stages in the Topographical Map of the City of Naples and its Surroundings by Giovanni Carafa Duke of Noja (1750–1775).
The completed work is shown in Luigi Marchese's Topographical Map of Monte Calvario of 1804.
The original building was also later converted into a rental palace; the central courtyard had been tampered with by projecting iron veranda-balconies in order to separate the flats.
The use, before the university, as a large furniture warehouse had continued and accentuated the building's decline.
Today, in fact, there is almost no trace of the rich interior decorations; the only remaining evidence is the chapel on the piano nobile.

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