The authorities of Naples, the main city of southern Italy, began to demolish the so -called “yellow candle” on Monday, one of the most significant properties of the concrete buildings complex symbol of marginality linked to the Camorra – Napolitan mafia – on the periphery of the city.
The demolition will take about 40 days, after their residents had to leave the building last year by the precarious state of the property, composed of 15 plants and that acquired notoriety after appearing in “Gomorra”, the novel by the writer Roberto Saviano, who lives under protection for the threats of the camorra, and the subsequent series.
“We are doing our best to try to solve a problem that exists for decades” and eradicate “housing situations that were not those of a civilized country,” said Naples mayor, Gaetano Manfredi, according to local media.
The City Council, he added, plans to deliver new homes “within a year” for the neighbors evicted after the collapse last summer of one balcony in another building of the complex with the same characteristics, the “Celest’s candle”, where three neighbors died.
The mayor referred to the lousy conditions of these buildings built between the decades of the 60s and 70s as a social housing in the neighborhood of Scampia, on the outskirts of Naples.
The buildings deteriorated over the decades to become an urban degradation symbol. This caused local authorities to collapse in the past four of the seven existing properties, all of the triangular style, with a candle shape.
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Not only the ‘yellow candle’, other ‘candles’ will be demolished
Currently, counting the building that began to collapse today, there are three standing buildings. It is also planned that another of them be collapsed, while the City Council plans to keep one of them as a testimony of this place that was one of the most symbolic parts in the history of Naples of the last sixty years.
According to Manfredi, the intervention in Scampia “is a sign that the State is present”, and that “when you want to solve a problem you can do it.”
The “candles” of Scampia acquired international notoriety after appearing in the famous “Gomorra” series, based on the novel by Neapolitan writer Roberto Saviano.
Its existence dates back to the architectural project designed by Franz Di Salvo in 1962, which sought to make the neighborhood a development symbol. However, it ended up becoming a symbol of drug trafficking, organized crime and poverty.
For years there was also an active associationism by the neighbors, who tried to combat the image associated with the camorra and the marginality of the “candles” and claimed a greater public intervention and support to improve the situation of the buildings.
With EFE information
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