“The aim of this agreement is to make an archaeological site of great historical and cultural interest accessible to a wider audience, as well as to relaunch, through social and cultural attractions, a portion of the territory in need of urban redevelopment and social.
The Metropolitan City has already done its part with a series of important works on the Site: today our new challenge, shared with our institutional partners, is to open this jewel to the public on an ordinary basis, so as to allow it to play its role as a driving force for the development of the territory, at a time when the entire metropolitan area of Napoli is at the top of the list of favorite destinations in the world”.This was stated by the mayor of the Metropolitan City of Naples, Gaetano Manfredi, on the sidelines of the ceremony, in the council chamber of Santa Maria la Nova, for the signing of the Agreement for the Enhancement and Integrated Management of the Archaeological Park of Liternum signed by Manfredi himself, by the mayor of Giugliano, Nicola Pirozzi, and by the director of the Archaeological Park of the Campi Flegrei, Fabio Pagano. Also present were the metropolitan councilors delegated to Heritage, Antonio Sabino, and to the Domitian Coast and Lago Patria, Salvatore Pezzella.
The ancient city of Liternum was founded by the Romans in 194 BC, together with Puteoli and Volturnum, as a maritime colony on the left shore of Lake Patria. The center of the civil, religious and commercial life of the colony, Ancient Liternum is especially famous for being the place of the voluntary exile and death of Scipio Africanus.
Its Forum, with the famous Anastylosis Column, is today the only emerging part of the settlement. The archaeological area where the Forum stands constitutes a significant part of the larger Archaeological and Naturalistic Park of Liternum, which is made up, in its entirety, of an area of about 85 thousand square meters. It is located in the Lago Patria hamlet of the Municipality of Giugliano, and contains within it the remains of the ancient Roman colony.
It extends along the shores of Lake Patria – a brackish water basin of volcanic origin, with an outlet to the sea – and is adjacent to the Domitian-Phlegraean coast, with over 40 km of sandy beaches, flanked by a lush pine forest. History and nature, sea and lake, make the Archaeological Park of Liternum unique, as the Site is of particular historical, archaeological and naturalistic interest together.
“Today we have signed shared strategies – Pagano underlined – and this is extremely important because it puts us in a position to finally start the organization of the wonderful Archaeological Park of Liternum. As competent bodies we are now able to implement, very quickly, a governance and management model to open those doors and above all to animate that place, and to offer its beauty and its history to schools, families and all those who will go to visit it”.
Pirozzi expressed great satisfaction “to achieve a fundamental objective, the result of the good synergy and institutional collaboration that has been created and that will certainly contribute to enhancing not only a property of notable value and cultural value such as that of Liternum, but the entire municipal territory”.
The three signatories take on responsibilities and the commitment to share, through consultation tables, the choices of actions to be implemented and the timing of implementation. The agreement also provides for some specific tasks. The Municipality, for example, undertakes to verify the legitimacy of the buildings that insist on the areas of municipal property, adopting the necessary actions to demolish any illegitimate volumes, to repurpose the existing structures with a view to future management of the Archaeological Park and to allocate the existing wooden structure to an info point-ticket office and to support the surveillance service.
After the works already carried out in these years, the Metropolitan City, instead, undertakes to guarantee, among other things, the surveillance service and the ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of the property area, including the cleaning of the greenery. The Park will instead be responsible for the scientific coordination of the activities. The Agreement has a duration of four years.
Article published on November 17, 2023 - 17:44
