100 Years Later, Petition Seeks to Name Square After Napoli’s Jewish Founder

In August, the football team Napoli will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its foundation by the Jewish entrepreneur and philanthropist Giorgio Ascarelli. Journalist Nico Pirozzi, author of two books about him, believes now is the right time to revive his longstanding initiative to name the square in front of the football stadium after Ascarelli. “Honoring him where the temple of Neapolitan football stands is an act of gratitude towards one of Naples’s sports founders and an act of historical justice towards a city marked by racial laws and the tragedy of the Nazi occupation.” Pirozzi launched a petition titled ‘Una piazza in onore di Giorgio Ascarelli, il fondatore del Calcio Napoli’ on the website www.change.org.

The initiative is even more meaningful considering the square is currently named after Vincenzo Tecchio, a prominent local Fascist lawyer who was active during the Fascist regime. After WWII, Tecchio was one of the founders of the Italian Social Movement, a neo-fascist political party. Pirozzi noted that Tecchio “is an overbearing figure, whose past has more shades than lights.”

Born in Naples in 1930, Ascarelli was one of the most important textile entrepreneurs in Italy and Europe. In 1926, he founded the football team Napoli and later donated a stadium to the city, which he had built at his own expense. The stadium was inaugurated in 1930, only a few weeks before Ascarelli’s death from peritonitis.