Under the streets of Naples, a social collective bets on locals, culture to help a rough neighbourhood thrive

In Naples, miracles are usually measured in drops of blood.

Several times a year, crowds pack the ancient southern Italian city’s main cathedral to watch the dried blood of San Gennaro, Naples’ patron saint, in the hope that it will liquefy — a ritual many see as a sign of protection for a metropolis shaped by invasions, plagues and earthquakes.

But in the Rione Sanità, one of Naples’ most isolated and neglected neighbourhoods, a quieter, more tangible kind of San Gennaro–linked miracle has been unfolding: cultural heritage turned into local jobs, skills and the steady draw of tourists to the area.

One weekday winter morning, in the corner of the café entrance to the Catacombs of San Gennaro, Antonio Aveta, 22, and Giada Colasurdo, 20, sat shoulder to shoulder, reading aloud from a history text about the saint.

They were preparing to guide visitors through a vast underground network of ancient burial chambers that for centuries remained largely invisible, even to those who lived just above them.

The reopening of the catacombs was the first project of La Paranza, a social co-operative founded in 2006 by parish priest Antonio Alfredo. The name is a Neapolitan term for fishing crew, or close-knit working group.

Over time, the group expanded to include after-school programs and locally run co-operative businesses.

From after-school program to leading tours

As a child, Aveta took part in La Paranza’s after-school programs. He visited the catacombs only once.

In high school, he got in trouble with the law and eventually realized he needed to straighten out, mostly, he says, because he didn’t want to disappoint his family again.

“I never imagined I’d be able to be an historical guide,” he said. “And I think that motivates me, the fact that this ability is so unexpected.”

That confidence has already translated into responsibility. Aveta has been guiding visitors through the Catacombs of San Gennaro for a year and has just been hired as one of three new educators to run the same after-school programs he once attended.

“Evolved,” is how he describes the neighbourhood, once synonymous with Camorra clan control, petty crime, poverty and social abandonment.

“I live here 24/7 and have seen how the catacombs over the past six or seven years has improved things.”

The bridge that created 2 worlds

Fellow trainee Colasurdo arrived at La Paranza through Italy’s civil service volunteer program. Before starting, she was planning to leave Naples. Now she’s reconsidering.

“In these months I’ve had the opportunity to discover the beauty the neighbourhood offers to the rest of the world,” Colasurdo said.

Colasurdo hails from Capodimonte, the more affluent area that rises just above the Sanità — the name literally means “top of the hill.”

Though separated by a short walk, the neighbourhoods were sliced in two by a bridge built in 1810 — linking the Capodimonte's Bourbon palaces, where the city's former ruling dynasty lived, to the historic centre.

“If you live in the area, there are two worlds: one above the bridge and one below,” said Antonio Della Corte, 37, a lifelong resident who has been part of the co-operative for nearly two decades and who now trains new guides like Aveta and Colasurdo.

“Before, if you lived in Sanità, you would just say, ‘I’m from the historic centre,’ never ‘I’m from the Sanità.’ It was like the worst possible business card.”

The co-operative’s approach of using local culture to generate local benefit extends beyond the catacombs.

Just down the road, Locanda del Monacone, a restaurant launched as an offshoot of the co-operative, offers training and steady work to about 20 young people.

At lunch time, waiters squeeze between tables holding steaming plates of traditional Neapolitan fare like pasta alla Genovese, a slow-cooked onion and beef sauce, and salsiccia e friarielli, local sausage served with bitter wild greens.

“It’s about keeping kids who grew up in the Sanità being proud to stay,” said Giuseppe Iacarino, the restaurant’s manager, who started out doing maintenance work at the catacombs 15 years ago.

“Giving them skills and decent jobs in the neighbourhood, and offering authentic Naples to visitors.”

A fragile transformation

The approach stands in contrast to a city grappling with overtourism.

After decades of being treated as an unsavoury stopover on the way to nearby Pompeii, Naples has become one of Europe’s fastest growing destinations — fuelled by cheaper flights, online bookings and a drop in crime.

The boom is bringing jobs and buzz about its gritty authenticity. But it’s also led to a spike in short-term rentals that are pushing locals out. Family-run greengrocers, cobblers and tailors are rapidly giving way to limoncello shops and stalls that sell 80s soccer-superstar Diego Maradona paraphernalia and tourist trinkets.

“The La Paranza model of tourism development can help slow this kind of change,” said Anna Fava, who heads the Naples chapter of Italia Nostra, a national heritage protection organization.

“But only if the government caps short-term rentals. Without hard limits, rents jump and outside investors move in — it becomes an unregulated free-for-all.”

Della Corte says he is clear-eyed about the risks.

“Obviously, you have to control growth and not destroy authentic Naples,” he said. “For the moment, we’re living the benefits of tourism, but we’re aware of the dangers.”

With youth unemployment still high, tourism has created opportunities. But without regulation, he warns, it could hollow out the very communities that made the city attractive in the first place.

“You have to make people rooted in the area,” he said. “To want to stay, not leave.”

La Paranza is now expanding beyond the Sanità. Through a new foundation, Napoli Centro, and a project called Mood, the co-operative is partnering with the Archdiocese of Naples to reopen 10 churches in the historic centre, each run by young people from the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Two decades ago, taxi drivers refused to take customers to the Sanità because it was considered too dangerous. Today, there’s a fixed fare from Naples’ central station. Della Corte sees that as proof the transformation is real — but fragile.

“This is not the only solution, but it’s one approach,” he said. "A way of keeping the social value and the economic value here, through the people who live here.”