near the Dazio railway station (Montesanto-Torregaveta line) on the border between the municipalities of Naples and Pozzuoli, Villa Medusa – Casa del Popolo was a private house, donated by the owners to the Municipality of Naples to become a day center for the elderly. Over time it had become a multifunctional center but managed by the local institutions but, due to neglect and austerity cuts, it was declared uninhabitable in 2008 and abandoned. The following year, the Municipality of Naples included the property among the disused assets for sale.
On January 19, 2013 a group of comrades, students, inhabitants of the territory of Bagnoli decided to occupy the building and return it to everyone. Since that moment, the hundreds of activities hosted in the building have transformed Villa Medusa into a space for criticism and grassroots participation, a “People’s house”, in which it is possible to support environmental, labor, political and student struggles of both the neighborhood, the city of Naples and the Flegrean area.
The Municipality of Naples, despite having included Villa Medusa among the salable properties, had planned to allocate one million euros for an intervention of maintenance and renovation of the building. A series of bureaucratic and legal issues, together with an impediment emitted by the Prefecture of Naples against the selected company, had led to the abandonment of the work.
In 2018, following the recognition of the space among the “emerging commons” of the city of Naples, the building of Villa Medusa – Casa del Popolo was interested by works of renovation and securing. This process has been made possible by the cooperation and active participation of the local institutions, the Municipality, the inhabitants of the territory and the community of the People’s house.
In the course of about two years of restructuring, the activities did not stop. In the meantime, the community has thus embarked on a process of discussion and collective elaboration for the adoption of the “Declaration of urban civic and collective use”, written on the basis of the needs and peculiarities of the Casa del Popolo and the local neighborhood. The community of Villa Medusa also worked to ensure the complete accessibility of the renovated spaces.
What are the activities of Villa Medusa – Casa del Popolo?
The People’s house contains, first of all, a series of thematic spaces aimed to assure a daily support to the inhabitants of the Bagnoli district and the surrounding area. Therefore, Villa Medusa – Casa del Popolo presents spaces to hold specific activities dedicated to the elderly, children and students.
The activities held at the Casa del Popolo are numerous and heterogeneous, including both initiatives which propose an alternative sociality and thematic spaces, aimed at offering services which are not guaranteed in the area. One of the most used and active spaces is the Popular Library, named after the comrade Lorenzo “Lollo” Tarantino. There are different study rooms, recently enriched with a room dedicated to children’s literature; there are also spaces sdedicated to the teaching of carpentry, popular sports and, above all, the dance group “La Medusa” which, remedying to past mistakes, offered again the spaces of Villa Medusa to those old people which had been deprived of it.
The People’s house also hosts numerous help and support desks for the inhabitants of the district: the main ones are the help desk against illegal work and exploitation, which helps those who are victims of exploitation and / or abuse at work; the help desk for psychological support and guidance for mutual territorial structures, animated by a self-organized group of experts; the territorial desk of the Movimento di Lotta – Disoccupati 7 Novembre, movement of unemployed people. The newest help desk has been dedicated to support the elderly in the bureaucratic procedure of reservation to the receive the vaccine against the Covid-19 virus.
In addition, the People’s house served as a space of organization for several social struggles of the Bagnoli district and the city of Naples. The main ones are the following: the mobilizations linked to the battle for the reclamation and reconversion of the former steel industry of the district, connected to the institution of the Osservatorio Popolare sulla Bonifica e Riconversione del SIN Bagnoli-Coroglio (Popular Observatory on the Reclamation and Conversion of Site of national Interest Bagnoli-Coroglio); the popular assembly of Bagnoli Libera; some of the activities and assemblies of the Laboratorio Politico Iskra and the Coordinamento Studenti Flegrei.
The main contacts of Villa Medusa – Casa del Popolo are the social pages on Facebookand Instagram. Many of the activities that take place at Villa Medusa – Casa del Popolo meet the public in different ways, online and especially offline, in order to involve also the inhabitants of the area which do not use social media or do not regularly use computers.