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 The
main office of the
DPUU is where once was the Conservatory of the Holy Spirit, whose
construction started in the second part of the ‘500 by the Brotherhood of the
Enlightened of Holy Spirit, formed under the direction of the Dominican father
Ambrogio Salvio to develop a charity activity.
In a first moment the Fathers, as Celano said, gathered in the church of the
Saints Apostles and subsequently in St. George the Great; then purchased a land
near the Real Door, erected a small church and in 1562 decided to found two
conservatories, “[…] one for the poor maidens virgins of the Fathers, the other
for the damsels, that were in power of prostitutes, with danger to lose the
virginal bashfulness”.
Later happened that the viceroy duke of Alcalà, “[…] to open the road of the
Incoronata Church up to the Real Door […] he decided to demolish the Church
paying the expenses. Soon the Fathers bought some houses and gardens in this
place that anciently was said “White eat”, and they adapted a small church, with
the idea to erect to the most greater one: as in effect it was done: and in the
day of the Proto-martyr Saint Stephen in the year 1563, at the time of
Archbishop Alfonso Carafa, was erected, with the usual solemnities of rites, the
first stone [of the church of the Holy Spirit]; and also they erected the
Conservatory where, during 1564, begun to introduce the daughters of the
Prostitutes, having gotten from the Royal Ministers faculty to remove them from
the Mothers. In progress of time, with continuous alms of the Neapolitans, the
Church and the Conservatory were widened in the form that is seen; and when it
worked completely, hosted 400 maidens. They were raised in the holy fear of God,
and in every other virtue as honorable woman. In age to deliberate if a maiden
wants offer to God their virginity, is given her the suit in the Monastery; if
she wants to get married, and there is honorable and respected person, the
Monastery gives her 100 money of dowry”.
The Company of the Greens and the Order of the Whites of the Holy Spirit took
care of the harvest of funds for the Conservatory.
To increase the profits of the Conservatory,
had been founded in 1590 the Bank of the Holy Spirit, situated in the great
courtyard to the left of the church, and to which was possible to enter or from
the same church, through the Chapel of the Company of the Greens, or from the
portal on via Toledo.
From this first courtyard was possible to pass in another courtyard, that of the
Conservatory, through the entrance located in correspondence to the portal of
via Toledo.
In 1816, abolished the monasteries, the building was acquired, together with the
activity of the Bank, from the administration of the Bank of the Two Sicilies
and in 1860, with the unity of Italy, it met in the foundation of the Bank of
Naples; it became then the principal center of the Bank in Naples up to 1939,
when the new central center was inaugurated in a part of the building of the
Town hall.
 
In the second postwar period, the Bank of
Naples decided to proceed a rehabilitation of the building of the Holy Spirit
and gave the charge to the architect Marcello Canino. What was realized between
1966 and 1972 was a real intervention of building substitution: a lot of the
architectures of the past were demolished. The fronts of via Forno Vecchio and
via Pignatelli were moved back, delimiting with railings the ancient layouts of
the roads. The original portal, on the great courtyard of the ancient Bank in
via Toledo, has been left on the new building.
In the second courtyard of the building, where the cloister of the monastery was
founded, to testimony of the preexisting structure residual, today unfortunately
stay only outlines of arcs where once was the eighteenth-century cloister.
FORMER DIRECTORS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF URBAN DESIGN
Prof. Uberto Siola
Prof. Vanna Fraticelli
Prof. Rosalba La Creta
Prof. Filippo Alison
Prof.
Claudio Claudi de Saint Mihiel
FORMER
DIRECTORS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF URBAN DESIGN AND PLANNING
Prof.
Claudio Claudi de Saint Mihiel
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