Pomigliano d'Arco

The name is Roman in both its halves. «Pomigliano» comes from the Pomilii, the colonists Rome posted to guard the Campo Romano — the land that a senator, sent to arbitrate a boundary dispute between Naples and Hyria, had awarded to the republic. And the «d'Arco» are the arches of the Augustan aqueduct, the one that carried water from Serino all the way to Baiae to fill the Piscina Mirabilis, the cistern of the imperial fleet at Misenum: at the foot of Monte Somma, villages were placed by calling them intus arcora or foris arcora, this side or that side of the arches. Pomigliano was on this side.

In 1938 the IRI charged Alfa Romeo with building the South's aeronautical centre here: engines, airframes, light alloys and an airport, one of the most modern industrial complexes in Europe. It was finished in 1943 and at once two bombing raids levelled it along with the town; the engines only turned again after the war, and then came the Alfasud and aerospace, while the airport gave way to the factory. What remains are the houses built for the workers, with a terracotta relief above each stairwell naming the trade of those who lived there: electricians, lathe operators. From the factory came the music too: the workers' group E' Zezi in 1975, and since 1996 the Pomigliano Jazz, which in summer carries the great names up onto Vesuvius. Naples is twenty minutes away on the Circumvesuviana.