Arzano

The name of Arzano has three explanations and none of them wins: the ancient arches that stood in the territory; or aer sano, healthy air, as Giustiniani would have it; or a Roman landowner called Artius, with the suffix that means «belonging to». The documents, on the other hand, are precise: the first is a sale of land of the year 937, and it is dated by the reign of Constantine VII, called the Porphyrogenitus — because the duchy of Naples still looked to Constantinople. The second is of 1110, and in the third, Angevin, the place is called Artianu. Close as it was to the capital, Arzano remained a crown village and enjoyed the same tax privileges as Naples.

The viceroy count of Lemos took the drainage of the Clanio in hand again and gave the work to Giulio Cesare Fontana: so were born the Lagni, the canals the people of Arzano later used to soften hemp. In 1656 the plague halved the population. Of the old village there remain the thirteenth-century facade of the Annunziata, the chapel of the Madonna della Bruna, which is of the eleventh century, the seventeenth-century bell tower of Sant'Agrippino — the patron, whose feast falls in November — and the name of a street: corso Salvatore D'Amato was once the Rettifilo al Bravo, after the bravi the local lords kept in their pay, and a tavern «al bravo» is still there. Today Arzano is above all paper: box factories, paper converters and the only paper mill left in the whole metropolitan city of Naples. The centre of Naples and Capodichino are minutes away, and the tables of the area — pizzerias and fry shops — keep prices the centre has forgotten.