since the most remote times, this contrada is also called “Callìa” which, from the greek origin of the word, mean beautiful contrada; in fact the road runs one of the most beautiful coasts procidane. At the bottom, from a viewpoint of this great curve, you can admire from a striking location the maritime hamlet of Corricella, where the fishermen houses clinging on high and steep costa form a characteristic agglomeration, common to other places in the Mediterranean, but particularly for the use of pastel colors yellow, pink, blue, green, white, useful to mariners to recognize his own house by the sea. The name Corricella derives from the Greek “callos coros”(beautiful contrada), the same etymology of Callìa, which constitutes the upper part.
The village of Corricella we can only enter through the stairs. The most popular is the “stairway of the nib”, the central one in front of the church of San Rocco(15th century), in the lowest point of the homonymous street. The stair passes through a dense array of houses in the narrow passages and narrow and leads up to the pier. This staircase, as the rest of the Corricella, has provided the backdrop to many film productions. And among the houses of Corricella we can distinguish some among the hotels and the most exclusive restaurants of the island. Back on the Via San Rocco, continuing for the contrada of Callìa you arrive to track entitled to Marcello Scotti, a priest eruditissimo victim of Bourbon reaction of 1799. In this way you align some palaces with beautiful gardens, that the nobles were built in the seventeenth century style in the most beautiful part of the cove of the “Chiaia”.
Among the buildings, on the left, there is a church dedicated to Saint Thomas Aquinas (XVIII century) governed by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blues (so-called for the mozzetta silk). The church owns a valuable wooden sculpture of Christ, performed in 1728 by the sculptor Neapolitan Carmine Lantriceno. In this sculpture Our Lord is shown at the moment of deposition from the Cross, supine on a simple table with his head resting on a cushion. This extraordinary work closes the funeral procession of the Holy Friday (the traditional procession of the “Mysteries”), and its passage is always accompanied by heard tears of emotion of the faithful islanders.
At the end of the road Marcello Scotti, Palazzo Emanuele (or Scotti, sec.XIX; said “Mamozio” from the popular name del Mascherone that adorns the rosta del Portone) determines a small crossroad.On the right we take Via Vittorio Emanuele II that goes toward Piazza della Repubblica. Along this road on the right rises the elementary school building that in heavy architectural form form a discordant note for the simple construction of the island. In the square in front of the building there is a monument dedicated to the fallen of the homeland of the first world war (1925). If instead the crossroads you continue straight on, it leads to a small square, on the left of which is the church of San Giacomo (1656), today deconsecrated and restructuring. Later there is the small church of San Vincenzo (1571) current headquarters of the Archconfraternity of Bianchi (so-called for the mozzetta white silk). After this the Church on your left there is the street of the Baths that leads to the beach of “Chiaia”, and later the Gardens of Elsa, immersed in fantastic orchards (where Elsa Morante wrote “the island of Arturo”), and the present site of the literary park named after the homonymous writer.
The Vittorio Emanuele II Alley continues between simple houses and sumptuous palaces d’epoca (worthy of note is the palazzo beef, of 1685, on the left, the oldest dated of the island), until reaching to another church, that of San Antonio Abate (first sec.XVII). This church stands at the beginning of Via Cavour and behind the contrada “court”, so called by the courtyards which surround it. In this contrada there is the tower of De Jorio, dates back to the XVII century, for a certain time used as a prison. In front of the church of San Giacomo, for track SS.Annunziata, goes before the homonymous Casale (on the left, at the bottom of which there is the Civic Hospital “Franciscan Albano”); later left turn in viale Madonna of freedom that leads to the Church of SS.Annunziata, rebuilt in 1600 on a convent of Benedictine Nuns. Resuming the way SS.Annunziata, there you forward in the locality “Starza” (name derived from the great extension of land that the Abbey possessed in this area), one of the districts most fertile areas of the island. One of the streets on the right (Via Faro), leads to the tip Pioppeto where there are some small hotels lonely and quiet in the countryside that degrade until the sea. On the tip, since 1849, is on the headlight, preceded by a belvedere with panorama on the channel of Procida.
Returning to the beginning of Via Faro, along the Via Regina Elena, leaving on the right tracks Rinaldi, S.Ianno and excellent, which, cultivated with vineyards, constitute the contrada of “Cottimo” (so-called for the particular working relationship that bound the peasants to the owners of the Lands). The road continues, with the name of Via C. Battisti, and always on the right, in the locality of the “Rotonda” meets a sixteenth-century tower (the best preserved of the three present in the island. This tower was built in the XVI century by order of the viceroy of Naples, Don Pietro di Toledo, for the defense of the people against the raids of the pirates. In Procida were built two other. One had to rise at the end of Via Tabaia, the ancient road linking the Marina of Holy Catholic with the Terra Murata in locality “Lingua”. The second lies on Via Giovanni da Procida, right after the church of S.Antonio, and certainly in later times has had to undergo a remarkable transformation to use home. The three towers are the coat of arms of the municipality of Procida.
From the tower of the Rotonda a road that passes through vineyards and orchards on the hill of Cottimo. Joints in the highest part, opens before our eyes an extraordinary spectacle: the creek of “Pozzo Vecchio”, enclosed by the “Punta della Serra” behind which, the beach of “Ciraccio”, long a kilometer and a half and terminates in a tongue of land that joins the island with the hill of Old Santa Margherita. Riscendendo from piecework basis you can easily reach the beach of Pozzo Vecchio, surmounted by a small cemetery of the island.
Photo by Stefano Guidi