On the corner of Via Filangieri an engineer built his own house around a marble staircase that climbs like a shell.
At a glance
Palazzo Mannajuolo stands on the corner of Via Filangieri and Via dei Mille, in the elegant Chiaia district. Built between 1909 and 1911 to designs by Giulio Ulisse Arata, it is counted among the finest Liberty buildings in Naples, famous above all for the elliptical marble staircase that cantilevers up through its core.
Key facts
- Period: 1909–1911
- Architect: Giulio Ulisse Arata
- Engineers: Giuseppe Mannajuolo and Gioacchino Luigi Mellucci
- Style: Liberty (Italian Art Nouveau)
- Structure: Reinforced concrete
- Coordinates: 40.8365, 14.2405 — Google Maps
History
The engineer Giuseppe Mannajuolo, who owned the plot, commissioned the building as his own residence and worked on its construction with the engineer Gioacchino Luigi Mellucci. The architectural design was entrusted to Giulio Ulisse Arata and carried out between 1909 and 1911.
The result married the new Liberty vocabulary with references to the Neapolitan Baroque of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and made early structural use of reinforced concrete — part of the wave of Art Nouveau that swept Europe’s cities at the turn of the century.
What you see
The signature is the great elliptical staircase: cantilevered marble flights wind upward around an oval void, edged by a sinuous wrought-iron balustrade. It is one of the most photographed interiors in Naples.
On the street the facade turns the corner with bow windows and floral Liberty detailing, a deliberately modern face among the older blocks of Chiaia.
Practical information
- Private residential building; the staircase can sometimes be glimpsed from the entrance hall, but it is not a public site.
- The facade is freely visible from the street.
- Best combined with a walk through the Chiaia shopping streets.
Getting there
Palazzo Mannajuolo is on Via Filangieri in Chiaia, a short walk from Piazza dei Martiri and the seafront. The area is served by city buses and the nearby Chiaia funicular.
Nearby
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Palazzo Mannajuolo”
- Comune di Napoli cultural records
- Studies on Neapolitan Liberty architecture
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