Villaggio Coppola

Villaggio Coppola (also known as Pinetamare) is a settlement in the Italian region of Campania, administratively a frazione of Castel Volturno. Housing U.S. military families for decades, it was the largest illegally built settlement in Italy. The builders were eventually found guilty of various crimes. The site is now a ghost town.

Villaggio Coppola
Frazione
Villaggio Coppola
Location of Villaggio Coppola in Italy
Coordinates: 40°58′26.22″N 13°59′25.68″E
Country Italy
Region Campania
ProvinceCaserta (CE)
ComuneCastel Volturno
Elevation
5 m (16 ft)
Time zoneUTC+1 (CET)
 • Summer (DST)UTC+2 (CEST)
Postal code
81030
Dialing code(+39) 081

Construction

Villaggio Coppola is located along the Via Domiziana, beside the Tyrrhenian Sea between Castel Volturno and Naples.[1] The settlement was built illegally in the 1960s by brothers Vincenzo and Cristoforo Coppola. They used cement suppliers connected to the Camorra and assembled the over half the village on public land which had previously been pine forest.[2][3]

Ghost town

The site became home for thousands of U.S. military families until the 1990s, when Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda declared the site unsafe and crime-ridden.[3] By the 2010s, the 12,000 apartments were mostly empty or squatted and the village had become a ghost town. The Coppola brothers' plans to redevelop the site into a tourist harbour have stalled.[1]

Part of the village was confiscated by the state in 1995, and in May 2000, the Coppola brothers were found guilty of constructing 5,000 buildings without permission, destroying 200 metres of coastlines and eradicating 150 species from the site. In the early 2000s, eight apartment blocks were demolished.[4][5]

References
  1. Pianigiani, Text by Gaia (17 May 2017). "Forsaken Village on Italy's Coast Tells Tale of a Paradise Lost". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 1 July 2019. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  2. (in English) Article IL VILLAGGIO COPPOLA at the Wayback Machine (archived June 5, 2008) from "la Repubblica" (9 July 2002)
  3. Vine, David (2015). Base nation : how U.S. military bases abroad harm America and the world (First ed.). USA: Metropolitan Books (Macmillan). pp. 122–4. ISBN 9781627791694.
  4. Leonardi, Francesca (3 March 2011). "The Story of Villaggio Coppola". FOTO8. Archived from the original on 21 June 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  5. (in English) Article Archived 2012-02-19 at the Wayback Machine from "Corriere della Sera" (6 August 1999)
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