Located in Salita S. Raffaele 3, in the district of Materdei, il Giardino Liberato was a monastery of the Teresian nuns, abandoned after the earthquake of 1980. In 2009, a group of Casapound (an Italian fascist organization) affiliates tried to occupy it: the inhabitants of the neighborhood, students, workers, unemployed, and militants from all over the city worked to expel the fascists from the area again, freeing Materdei exactly as happened in 1943. Immediately after, the Materdei Inhabitants Committee was born and, in the following years, it decided to reopen the Giardino Liberato and return it to the neighborhood and the whole city. Between November 2011 and 2012 the freed space has been recognized as one of the emerging commons of the city of Naples.
The church and the monastery were founded by the Teresian nuns following the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, which destroyed their original convent. Later the monastery has been used as a boarding school for young girls and then was sold to the Municipality of Naples. The original plan was to transform it into a community housing complex for the elderly but, after the 1980 earthquake, the site has been abandoned. With the expulsion of Casapound, the Giardino Liberato began to be a place of shared and consensual construction and decision, characterized by voluntary activities based on the exchange of time, knowledge and experience and the experimentation of practices aimed at resisting the effects of the economic crisis and new models of human relations.
What are the activities of the Giardino Liberato?
The most fascinating and unique activities of the space are the ones related with the garden itself. The city of Naples and especially its historic districts suffer from a chronic lack of public parks, aggravated by the cuts in staff dictated by austerity policies and a lacking respect for common spaces.
The community of the Giardino Liberato dedicates two important activities to care, sociality and sharing, centered in the garden of the space: the first is the Garden of the Little Ones, dedicated to the self-construction of games and tools, as well as to childrens’ socialization often absent from any public discourse. The second is the laboratory of the Educational Garden Curiamo il verde (“caring for the green area”), which is aimed at taking care of the Giardino Liberato iself through actions of self-restoration and regeneration of the space.
Another precious activity of the Giardino Liberato, thanks to the silence which characterize the space – a rare thing in the alleys of the city – is the splendid neighborhood library. This is an even more important activity if you consider that Materdei, like other districts of Naples, does not have institutional spaces dedicated to reading or consultation and also lacks a real library. The neighborhood library contains texts of a general nature, dictionaries, literature books and numerous essays. A service of book loan is also active.
Among the local activities to which the Giardino Liberato contributes there are the annual Friariello Multicultural and Anti-Fascist Festival, which is usually held in during spring, and the Carnevale Sociale di Napoli. Finally, the Giardino Liberato community is participating in the national path of Per una Società della Cura.
The Giardino Liberato community has as its main references the website and the Facebook page. It is also possible to follow the activities of the space on Instagram Instagram and Telegram.