Asilo Filangieri - Naples
Description
1. GeCo Living Lab:
“The Asilo Filangieri is an historical public building located in the center of the southern Italian city of Naples. It remained empty for quite a long time until, in 2012, a group of citizens decided to occupy it to start a path of participatory governance of the space. Within the space many activities and projects were organized, things which fostered the aggregation of many people around the stewardship of the building. The assembly which undertook the governance of the building (which was – and still is – open to all) built up a democratic process to come up with a “charter” of rules and principles for the management and protection of the estate. On its side, the public owner (the municipality of Naples) realized that the practice carried out in the “Asilo Filangieri” had a positive social impact greater than the municipality could have created itself resorting to traditional public tools and resources. For this reason, the municipality decided to legitimize the process by incorporating the “charter” (“declaration”) written by the community into an administrative act (a deliberation of the city council), this way giving effects to its provisions and legitimizing the possession and the stewardship directly carried out by citizens. The example of Asilo Filangieri introduces another important point. Namely that, most of the times (although not always) generative commons lay in public buildings which could not be differently regenerated due to the lack of resources of public administrations. This phenomenon is very widespread, to the point that certain cities, precisely because of that, have decided to use generative commons as a general strategy for the management and regeneration of public spaces, making them a guideline of local public policies.”
2. Gabriella Riccio:
"L’asilo is at the same time a political, artistic and juridical experiment that is inventing new institutions and practicing a series of small breaks into the system on different aspects.
L’asilo is today an interdependent center for the production for art, culture and education directly managed and administrated by an informal community of workers: artist, activists, researchers."
(https://www.academia.edu/32877090/LAsilo_-_from_the_occupation_to_a_case_of_best_practice)
3. EnCommuns:
"An Original Common Dedicated to Art and Culture
L'Asilo is today a center for the production of art and culture, located in a monumental building in the historic center of the city of Naples. This space is now managed by an open community and has been granted the status of "Common Good of the City of Naples" — a status developed jointly by the community and the City Hall, following many years of discussions in which confrontation and dialogue alternated. L'Asilo (its space as well as the activities and cultural offerings it provides) is, in principle, freely accessible to everyone, on the basis of rules of use produced by the community that animates the site. The space and its use are governed by rules of use and management founded on inclusion, designed to enable any citizen of the city to enjoy the services offered, as well as to participate in management decisions, provided that a certain number of rules are respected.
The experience of L'Asilo was born from the occupation of the building of the former Asilo Filangieri by workers in art, culture, and the performing arts. It was an underused space that housed the "Forum of Culture" foundation. The occupation, originally conceived as symbolic, was supposed to last three days, motivated by opposition to the centralizing policies of large-scale cultural events (Forum della Cultura) organized by the city of Naples and deemed exclusionary toward the vast majority of citizens. However, after the three days of initial occupation, the occupants decided to extend the occupation and settle permanently in the space. The experience then transformed into a succession of public assemblies open to all (residents, artists, activists, researchers…). It was in this context that the decision was made to turn L'Asilo, and its space, into a common good of the city and its residents."
(https://www.encommuns.net/articles/2026-10-14-lasilo-a-naples-un-commun-de-communaute-ouverte/)
Interview
Former Naples mayor Luigi di Magistris, interviewed by EnCommuns, translated from the French by DeepSeek:
* EnCommuns: To conclude this interview, let’s talk about the case of Asilo Filangieri. What was developed at the Asilo has in fact served as a model for building other commons. Does the Asilo case deserve particular attention, in your view?
LDM: All the commons we have established in Naples are dear to me, and each has its own particularities. The Asilo marked the beginning of our adventure and of the laboratory, but after that there was Scugnizzo Liberato, Villa Medusa, Lido Pola, Santa Fede, Liberata, and others still. They are located in different territories of the city, in neighborhoods that each have their own specificity.
To give an example, let’s take the case of the problems we encounter with “bradyseism.” Seismic shocks occur, particularly in the Phlegraean area known to be an earthquake zone. One of the commons, Villa Medusa, which is located at the epicenter of the bradyseism, has become a fundamental place of support for the population. It offers first-emergency relief but also and above all psychological assistance. Villa Medusa has thus provided more than 300 accesses to psychological assistance services, which the ASL (Local Health and Social Assistance service), a public service, does not do. Villa Medusa thus offers an activity that adds to the services offered by the local ASL. Medusa has therefore become a collective and democratic institution established in the territory that compensates for an absence of public provision, which is especially pronounced in our city in this time of crisis.
* EnCommuns: And is it volunteers who do this? Is it like at the Asilo—only unpaid work?
LDM: At present, the city government has really withdrawn. Previously (under my term), the city government guaranteed resources for a series of services. Now the common is completely left to its own devices. And, as far as I know, there is no internal remuneration. To my knowledge, everything is voluntary."
(https://www.encommuns.net/articles/2026-10-14-naples-laboratoire-des-biens-communs/)
Discussion
Inaugurating 'Civic and Collaborative Use' of civic and public space(s)
"Manifold are the potential ways of articulating the concrete/daily life of the commons. The ‘civic and collective urban use’, put in effect by the radical social-political experience of L'Asilo, Napoli, is among these. Leaving to the next section the description of the history and the details of L'Asilo's life, here the focus zooms in on the civic and collective urban use (CCUU).Generally, the ‘civic use’ is an ancient right, probably of medieval origins, of collective use of private or public fields, entitled to the members of the community settled in the territory. The civic use was usually associated to practices like pasture, estovers, hunting, sowing, but it was progressively abandoned due to urbanisation and industrialisation, becoming marginal in the Italian legal system.
The experiment made by the community of workers of L'Asilo is based on a creative interpretation — and expansion — of the civic use. In other words, while keeping its foundational elements, namely the right of collective use entitled to a community of people settled in a certain territory, the workers of L'Asilo extended such collective use to the urban sphere; the civic use became thus the ‘civic and collective urban use’, designing the right of a community of people to self-manage and use the urban commons. The defining elements of the CCUU are, therefore, (I)an informal community of people, thus not identified as a formal-legal association or foundation;(II) the faculty of self-regulation, namely the power of the community to decide about the regulation and management of the commons through participatory and democratic processes;(III) the social and cultural value of such experiences and practices.
The collective use, in the specific case of L'Asilo, is exercised with respect to a building in the centre of the city of Napoli, also part of the city's historical heritage. This building, a wonderful three-storey XVI century building (about 4000 square meters), owned by Municipality of Napoli — thus, formally public property — was actually used in a quasi-private manner through a clientele-oriented management, with an ongoing waste of taxpayers money. The workers of the arts of the city initially occupied the building as a protest against the private use of the common heritage. Afterwards, within the struggle for the recognition of the role of the community in the self-management of the building — and given also the importance that L'Asilo was acquiring for the cultural and social life of the city — the art workers decided to avoid the model of the occupation and, at the same time, of the formal-exclusive attribution to one or more specific associations/foundations of the space. The aim of the political and institutional struggle of L'Asilo was the full recognition of the community as the institution that at once directly manages and uses — thus, creates — the commons. In 2015 the Municipality officially recognised the ‘Urban Civic Use Regulation’ produced by the workers community of L'Asilo: ‘By acknowledging this regulation, the public administration assumes the burden of ensuring the usability of the place, while the right to make use of it is free and guaranteed to all but accompanied by a participatory model that is founded on open assemblies and thematic roundtable talks.’ "
The Asilo as a Open Community Based Commons
EnCommuns:
(interpretation of the translation, by z.ai)
"What makes L'Asilo a new type of "common" — in the sense given to this concept by Elinor Ostrom — is the particular set of distinctive features that set it apart from other commons documented in the literature. These features justify designating it as an open community-based common. At its core lies a socio-economic model and a mode of governance centered on deliberation, through which the community collectively shapes the rules, offerings, and direction of the space.
The institutionalization of L'Asilo followed a remarkable trajectory: from an illegal occupation to a formally recognized "common good of the city of Naples," validated through the deliberations of the City Council. This transformation was achieved by revitalizing the notion of civic uses (usi civici) — an ancient legal device rooted in the Italian rural tradition — and updating it for application to a modern urban context. Through this creative legal reinterpretation, the community was able to anchor its collective claim to the space within an established institutional framework, while simultaneously expanding that framework to accommodate a new kind of common.
In this sense, the affirmation of L'Asilo as an entity of a new type is nothing less than the writing of a new page of the return of the commons."
(https://www.encommuns.net/articles/2026-10-14-lasilo-a-naples-un-commun-de-communaute-ouverte/)
Source: "A new type of Open Commons: the case study of l'Asilo. A transformative experience in the city of Naples" (2020), available on HAL: hal-03408092.
Ongoing doctorate from Ana Sofia Acosta Alvarado. Université Sorbonne Paris Nord (formerly Université Paris 13). CEPN — Centre d'Économie de l'Université Paris Nord (UMR CNRS 7234). Thesis Director: Benjamin Coriat Date of Defense: December 3, 2024: "The thesis studies the Ex-Asilo Filangieri in Naples, proposing a new category of commons — the "commun de communauté ouverte" (open community-based common). Based on an ethnographic investigation combining the Ostromian approach with the "Naples school" of commons, it examines how an illegal occupation transformed into a formally recognized "common good of the city of Naples" through the revitalization of the ancient legal institution of usi civici (civic uses)."
More Information
- Article: The commons and the civic and collective urban use: from theory to the praxis of L'Asilo, Napoli. By Adriano Cozzolino. Written for the conference “Participatory governance in Culture: Exploring Practices, Theories and Policies. Do it Together”, 22-24 November, Rijeka (Croatia).
Extensive case study, including about the regulatory and legal advances of the case. The community of L'Asilo read and commented on the paper.