Rione Antignano

It was born in Roman times as a simple rural settlement, on via Puteolis Neapolim per colles road which before the excavation of the connecting tunnel between Fuorigrotta and Mergellina was the only land connection between the Phlegraean area and the city. Around the 2nd century AD the road was rearranged and called via Antiniana (either from ante Agnano as it faces the small lake of Agnano, which had dried up for centuries, or from the adjective Antonianum, referring to a particular owner of the area). At the beginning of the Middle Ages, innumerable small agricultural settlements were formed along that road and the other consular roads that linked Naples to Nola, Atella, Capua and Cuma, which were called "casali"; and Antignano has been one of the more than fifty farmhouses that surrounded Naples since the time of the Dukes, whose inhabitants came down to the city to sell agricultural products.[2]

In the 15th century it was mentioned as property of the noble Capece family (in particular in the person of Scipione Capece, Lord of Antignano and of San Giovanni a Teduccio), and, towards the end of the century, the poet Giovanni Pontano, minister of Ferrante I and of Alfonso II of Aragon, he had a magnificent villa built there with the famous horti, which he himself sang in his compositions. The basilica of San Gennaro in Antignano in the homonymous street deserves a mention: the current building dates back to the early twentieth century and is devoid of particular stylistic merits; almost at the entrance to via della Cerra there is a tiny aedicule with a marble effigy of the saint's head, taken from the pre-existing church erected in 1707, demolished in 1893 to make room for the current basilica, then built in 1904 on a project by Giuseppe Pisanti; this complex stands in the place where, traditionally, the miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of San Gennaro took place for the first time.[3]

In the Bourbon period Antignano was a nerve center of the Dazio, of which the seat is still preserved, a small building with two arches on the side of which the inscription: "Here you pay for the census regj". Along the Via Arenella, which since the Middle Ages has connected the Vomero Vecchio, Antignano and the Arenella, has seen the great procession of the Risen Christ take place since the 17th century, also known as "the mystery of Antignano": a religious and folkloristic event, typical projection of the ancient medieval theater, perhaps introduced in the viceregal period.[4]