Galleria Umberto trial, the controversy of the lawyer of one of the defendants

The Umberto Gallery Trial Scandal, the First Instance Sentence Tries to Exonerate the Municipality: The Lawyer of One of the Defendants Speaks Out

The appeal of the trial regarding the death of the young Giordano is underway. “There is still debate about the ownership of a historical monument when, pursuant to art. 9 of the Constitution, without any doubt, the public administration is the only body responsible for the protection of the historical and artistic heritage of the Nation”. The words of one of the lawyers.

Another hearing is approaching in the trial for the collapse of the Galleria Umberto in Naples, which caused the death of the young Salvatore Giordano, who suffered serious injuries after being hit on the head by a heavy fragment of a frieze that broke away from the architectural work.

The Galleria Umberto in Naples is a historical monument and therefore owned by the Municipality, in particular the frieze of the arch that supports the vault has an important function in maintaining the dome which is unquestionably the property of the Neapolitan administration, as also highlighted by the Attorney General during the last hearing, which was held on May 27 in front of the Court of Appeal of Naples.

Furthermore, there are laws and documents that attest to this, and which have been acquired for the appeal process which is still ongoing.

"There is still debate over the ownership of a historic monument when, pursuant to Article 9 of the Constitution, without any doubt, the public administration is the only body responsible for protecting the nation's historical and artistic heritage."

These are the words of the lawyer Carlo Spina, defender of one of the defendants who, like three other appellants, waived the statute of limitations in order to be able to defend his innocence until the end from the prejudice of a first-instance sentence, which sees him condemned for the failure to protect a property that "by common feeling" is not private property.

Moreover, this "common feeling" during the trial was fully shared in the testimony of the accredited academic Prof. Nicola Augenti, who was called upon several times to act as a consultant in important trials, such as that of the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa.

In fact, the academic appointed as a consultant for the prosecution, heard before the first instance judge, stated that, without any shadow of a doubt, the pediment, from which the murderous plaster had come off, is public property.

Moreover, the regulations of the condominium in Piazzetta Matilde Serao n.7, a document acquired in the trial records, say nothing about a specific intervention on the murderous pediment.

Another element brought to the attention of the judge by the same defense lawyer of the defendant who renounced the statute of limitations, is represented by a document, signed by Prof. Nicola Spinosa, with which in 1996, following the fall of plaster from the entrance arch of the gallery, on the Via Santa Brigida side, caused by water infiltration on the covering of the arch, the superintendence of artistic heritage of Naples invited the municipal administration to
intervene by also providing for the restoration of the damaged parts;

Faced with this act by an administrative body responsible for the protection of artistic heritage, the municipality of Naples believed it had to take charge of it by entrusting the restoration work to a specialized company.

Moreover, the same witness Carughi, always on the occasion of his deposition before the first instance judge, stated: that this was done because it was believed that the arch was public property, as it was subject ipso iure to a restriction and the same evaluation could, in his opinion, also be extended to the other entrances to the Gallery.

The situation is so clear that the first degree sentence seems scandalous to me, in a case that caused the death of a young boy, 10 years ago - continued the lawyer, who then explained -, first of all because there is a state law, the Naples law, of 1885, which prohibits the sale to private individuals (and therefore to banks) of the facades that are on the streets on the horizontal bands of the historic monument, which can be intervened on only through a public fund that provides for 50% to be paid by the Municipality and 50% by the State.

Some have spoken of a deed of sale for the fourth-floor apartment from 1917," Spina continued, "which in reality only confirms what we have said, that is, that the banks could not sell the terrace (under which is the pediment above the entrance arch of the gallery).

Specifically, this deed of sale from 1917 refers to the sale of the apartment annexed to the terrace (the one on the incriminated pediment) and also specifies the boundaries of the property sold, as provided for by the Pisanelli civil code, prior to the current one, which requires that the things that are explicitly written be transferred.

Precisely in this document the assets to be transferred to the owner DR are listed and in fact the incriminated tower is not there precisely because it could not have been there, since it is municipal property and therefore not saleable: the non-saleability, to be clear, derives precisely from the legal nature of the terrace, different from that of the apartment”.

The Attorney General, in his last closing speech in court, spoke of "a decade-long deficient maintenance", which however has been reported several times by the condominiums adjacent to the arch in question who communicated to the Municipality several times (in 2009 and then in May 2014) the need to intervene to secure the part, which however, as ordinary citizens, they could not intervene on as it was a monumental part of the gallery.

Although the concerns were highlighted in court, the Deputy Prosecutor General requested confirmation of the first-instance ruling from the Court of Appeal. She also misunderstood the fact that what we call the Galleria is divided into a private section (condominium buildings and their facades) and a public section (streets covered by glass vaults and their appurtenances, including the friezes).

A final consideration, which according to the same defense attorney could also be made by an ordinary citizen when reading the reasons for the sentence that attribute to the pediment a decorative function for the facades of the neighboring condominiums, thus also attributing the obligation of its maintenance, is that if the same yardstick were applied to the Trevi Fountain which forms a whole with the facade of Palazzo Poli, in the absence of suitable documentation, the maintenance obligation would fall, according to that Trevi principle of "presumption" recalled in the sentence of the Court of Naples, exclusively on the owners of the palace of the Duke Poli, who could, as Totò did in the famous film "Totò Truffa 62", sell it to third parties.