Italian
by Carlo Franchini and Luisa Sernicola, University of Naples “L’Orientale”
It’s a day in May and Naples, nestled between the hills and the calm waters of the gulf, welcomes me with the familiarity and joy that only seaside cities can offer. I climb up Via Mezzocannone, in the pulsating heart of the historic center, accompanied by Luisa Sernicola, a dear friend and archaeologist at the Orientale. We reach Piazza S. Domenico Maggiore. Here, in the ancient district of Seggio di Nilo, where the highest Neapolitan nobility resided, stands Palazzo Saluzzo di Corigliano, built in the sixteenth century at the behest of Giovanni di Sangro and now home to the Department of Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean (DAAM) of the University of Naples L’Orientale.
We pass through the monumental portico in piperno stone and climb the impressive staircase until we reach the fourth floor, an extension wanted by the building’s eighteenth-century owner, Agostino Saluzzo, the second Duke of Corigliano, after whom the palace is named. In one of the private rooms of the residence, the famous Mirror Cabinet, I am received by Professor Andrea Manzo, the current Director of the Department, whom I have known for some time and who will accompany me today on a special visit to discover the study and research activities that take place daily within these walls.
Watch the video interview with Prof. Andrea Manzo on YouTube
The University of Naples “L’Orientale” was founded in the eighteenth century as the College of the Chinese. Founded by Matteo Ripa and recognized in 1732 by Clement XII, it is the oldest school of sinology and oriental studies in Europe. Its long and established tradition of studies on the languages, societies, and cultures of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas responds to the original purpose of identifying the points of contact and peculiarities of peoples and cultures, stimulating comparison, enriching diversity, overcoming barriers and monolithic unity, becoming permeable to the other, to the different.
This vision is the basis for all the activities of the Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies (DAAM), the culmination of this long tradition. Currently, the department offers courses in over twenty ancient and modern languages, along with their respective philologies and literatures, within a historical and cultural framework that includes history in the strict sense, as well as art history, archaeology, and the history of religious and philosophical thought. The educational offer includes two Bachelor’s degree programs – Ancient Cultures and Archaeology: Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean and Oriental and African Languages and Cultures – and two Master’s degree programs – Archaeology: Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean and Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, complemented by a Master’s degree in Teaching Chinese Language and Culture, a PhD program in Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean, and an Interuniversity School of Specialization in Archaeological Heritage: Oriental, Classical, and Medieval Archaeology in collaboration with the University of Salerno. Additionally, every year it is enriched by a busy schedule of workshops, seminars, conferences, and meetings attended by Italian and foreign specialists.
Chatting, we move around corridors, frescoed halls, and libraries filled with rare manuscripts and ancient and modern printed volumes: the documental heritage of Palazzo Corigliano is estimated at over 300,000 volumes, including monographs and periodicals, on the East, Africa, and the Mediterranean area.
We literally move back in time until we reach the Hall of Antiquities, in the basement, where the remains of some Roman structures on which the building stands are visible, investigated in the Eighties of the last century by the same professors of the department. Here, indeed, the past, history, are not only studied and taught, but breathed in every day.
Research activities are the flagship of DAAM. Dozens of projects on topics ranging from antiquity to contemporaneity, conducted from an interdisciplinary perspective, and articulated through a dense network of collaborations with other Italian and foreign universities and research institutes, and above all, through the numerous Study Centers born within the projects “Department of Excellence”, funded for the five-year periods 2018-2022 and 2023-2027. A department, therefore, with roots deeply anchored in the past, but with a gaze turned towards the future, as evidenced by the numerous activities on the more current than ever topics of digital transition and paleoenvironmental studies.
Furthermore, a department that opens up to the external community, through actions aimed at producing public goods of a cultural, social, or educational nature, and through activities related to the management, protection, and enhancement of the cultural heritage of the countries where its archaeological missions operate. Many of these Public Engagement activities are also carried out through the use of digital platforms such as websites and social media.
Perhaps the most tangible sign of this instinctive and constant openness to the public of the DAAM and the University is represented by the Museum System.
Hosted on the ground floor of the nineteenth-century Palazzo du Mesnil, with a superb view of the sea of the Gulf of Naples, the University Museum System, established in 2017, includes the collections of the Oriental Museum Umberto Scerrato and the Museum of the Italian African Society.
The first, opened in 2012, was born from an idea by Umberto Scerrato, archaeologist and professor at the Oriental University, who already in the Seventies had put together a collection of Islamic ceramics and metals of Iranian origin. To this initial nucleus of artifacts, others have been added over time, from the archaeological research of the University and the generosity of some donors, reaching the current connotation that presents Islamic funerary steles from Egypt, seals from the ancient Near East, ceramic fragments and other ancient artifacts from Sudan, materials from Eritrea and Ethiopia, a substantial collection of Islamic ceramics, sculptures from India and Chinese porcelains.
The Museum of the African Society of Italy, inaugurated in 2014, collects ethnographic materials, some archaeological finds, collections of rocks and minerals, botanical and zoological collections from Africa. Moving among musical instruments, weapons, ornaments, and traditional tools, mummies of cats from Ptolemaic Egypt, collections of seeds, plants, gums and resins, shells, and other animals, one can fully breathe the spirit that animated this association founded in Naples in 1880. An holistic approach to the African continent, oriented towards study and documentation aimed at evaluating the opportunities for economic exploitation of resources.
With the common aim of all expressions of the Oriental, to combine research, teaching, and Public Engagement, the University Museum System represents a unique opportunity for students to work directly on materials, training and practicing in activities of documentation, description, conservation, and restoration through educational workshops properly organized by teachers and researchers.
The visit comes to an end. Walking along the beautiful promenade of via Chiatamone, overlooking the museum, I say goodbye to Professor Andrea Manzo, thanking him for the time he has spent with me and for the wealth of information shared.
I always come back to Naples and to the Orientale, a university to which I am very attached for a series of personal and family events. Like the stretch of sea in front of me, this university is truly an open window to the world, and to all students who are currently choosing the university path to undertake, I address Andrea’s invitation: “Enter our classrooms, let yourselves be contaminated and fascinated by disciplines, knowledge, and cultures that may seem distant from each other, and, who knows, you might discover a vocation, a passion, an interest that you didn’t think you had before.” Alternatively, visit www.unior.it and navigate with us, in space and time.
