The urban area known as "
quartieri" (referring to the military term) was originally built with the intent of creating housing destined to host
the guards of the fortress. It was built around the 16th Century. Designed by Siena architect Giovanni Benincasa[2] and the Napolitan Ferdinando Manlio[3], by the order of Pedro de Toledo, the Viceroy King at the time, to create a neighborhood of Spanish military garrisons. The plan was to house the soldiers in order to the repress any eventual revolts of the Neapolitan population, or as a temporary home for the soldiers that passed through Naples directed to other locations of conflict At the same time, it was a popular structure equipped to give lodging to the many locals who came from the surrounding countryside to settle in the reigning capital city. From its inception, the area known as "Quartieri Spagnoli” was dense with both people and buildings. Thus, it became a magnet for criminality, such as gambling and prostitution. Much of this was driven by the offering of leisure activities by the locals to the soldiers staying in the quarters or passing through. Even with the declaration by the Viceroy King of Naples, Don Pedro de Toledo, of some specific legal acts created to dismantle the leisure activities [5], the neighborhood remained as it was, shedding its original function, thus staying as an area of great social difficulty within the Parthenope city. [6] Throughout the anthropic evolution of the area, from 1500 to 1700, the military was progressively less present while a "high percentage of immigrants from surrounding areas, wove into the area, particularly from the service industry. Artisans, especially shoemakers and dressmakers, were present in droves.” Beginning in the 18th Century, this urban area became characterized (as does the other areas of the city) by a strong fragmentation and disparity of labor and entrepreneurial activities. Until the
19th Century, the proximity with
via Toledo, home of important administrative and financial offices (
Banco delle Due Sicilie, Borsa, Gran Corte dei Conti), incised significantly on the social-professional composition of the inhabitants of the area, which took on the resemblance of a residential area, given the presence of nobles, laborers, owners of the middle class. With the unification of Italy, it became Even with the propositions "to do away with" the neighborhood brought about in urban proposals of reclamation in the first half of the 20th Century, the area has stayed unaltered, and to this day, the neighborhood has 14.000 inhabitants in 4,000 families spread out over a surface area of about 80 hectares. Due to the particular structure of the ground, as in other historical neighborhoods of the city, it's possible, and not rare, for the ground to sink. During the night between the 22 and the 23 of September, 2009, in
vico San Carlo, probably caused by torrential rains, the street sank. and a chasm of almost 20 meters in length formed. This provoked the immediate evacuation for some buildings and the closure of the
San Carlo alle Mortelle church. ==
Quartieri Spagnoli Today ==