Naples port

Naples port
Data
UN / LOCODE	ITNAP
operator	Port Authority of Naples ; ( ADSP del Mar Tirreno centrale )
opening	Antiquity
Port type	Freight and passenger port
Total area of the port	409 ha with water areas (2016)
Passengers	7,868,476 (2016)
Throughput	22,396,568 t (2016)
Container (TEU)	483,481 (2016)
website	www.porto.napoli.it
Geographic information
place	Naples
region	Campania
Country	Italy
	Satellite image, port on the right
Coordinates	40 ° 50 '10 " N , 14 ° 16' 14" E Coordinates: 40 ° 50 '10 " N , 14 ° 16' 14" E
	Location port of Naples

The port of Naples ( Italian Porto di Napoli ) is one of the largest sea ports in Italy . The oldest part of the port is located directly in front of the old town of Naples on the gulf of the same name .

The port, which has existed since the 8th century BC, recorded a passenger volume of almost 7.9 million in 2016, including 1.3 million cruise participants . The cargo throughput was 22.4 million tons. A regional port authority based in Naples also manages the ports of Castellammare di Stabia and Salerno .

Infrastructure

The port facilities extend over 409 hectares, of which 266 hectares are water and 143 hectares are land. The shore length of all quay walls is a total of over 11 kilometers, on which there are 75 larger berths. The port basin is up to 17 meters deep, the two port entrances are 250 and 300 meters wide.

Seen from west to east, the port can be divided into several areas: The oldest part of the port in the west is reserved for cruise and ferry traffic, in the center there are shipyards with several dry docks , in the east is the newer industrial port.

Map of the port of Naples by features; light blue: ferry and cruise ships, brown: mixed zone, dark green: shipyards, light green: bulk and general cargo, orange: container terminal, gray: pier systems for tankers

To the southwest is the pier San Vincenzo on the harbor side of the pier , which officially still partly naval base is, however, is primarily reserved for boats of security agencies. A conversion of this facility and its further opening for civil use, in particular as a marina and for cultural and business purposes is planned. In a clockwise direction follows the Beverello quay, which is set up for ferry connections with the islands in the Gulf of Naples and with other places in the region. The large Angioino pier with the Stazione Marittima is now a cruise terminal. The Stazione Marittima has been modernized according to airport standards and houses, among other things, a congress center . It is operated by Terminal Napoli SpA , in which several cruise lines are involved. The next pier, called Imacolata Vecchia , is reserved for larger ferries connecting Naples with Sicily , Sardinia and the Aeolian or Aeolian Islands . At this pier is the Museo dell'emigrazione , which is reminiscent of the Italian waves of emigration to America . The aforementioned port facilities for passenger traffic, especially the cruise terminal, are located a few hundred meters from the most important buildings in the old town, including the Castel Nuovo , the Palazzo Reale , the Piazza del Plebiscito with the Basilica of San Francesco di Paola , the Teatro San Carlo and the Galleria Umberto I . The Municipio metro station is in front of the terminal .

The trapezoidal pier Carlo Pisacane following in an easterly direction and the port basin Villa del Popolo can be described as multi-purpose facilities. Several shipyards have settled in the middle section of the port, which specialize in ship repairs and some of them also build ships there. For ship repairs, the Cantieri del Mediterraneo company is worth mentioning. In shipbuilding, Naples has had a second mainstay for a long time in neighboring Castellammare di Stabia, where a Fincantieri shipyard is now located.

Four piers of the industrial port follow to the east of the shipyard. The piers Vittorio Emanuele II and Flavio Gioia are used for the transshipment of general cargo and solid bulk cargo , the Pier Giovanni Bausan and the quays behind it form a container terminal , the Pontile Vigliena is the oil port. In the far east, on the Darsena di Levante , construction began on a new container terminal, the southern quay wall front of which is 670 meters long and thus offers space for two large container ships or for a single very large one. The harbor basin is over 17 meters deep here. The 25 hectare platform will have an annual capacity of 800,000 TEUs , while the old terminals will only have 400,000 total. The platform is also to be enlarged by a further 50 hectares to the east because of the need for a better siding (Darsena di Levante 2.0) . In the first stage, the basin between the old Progresso and Levante piers will be filled in with excavation from the rest of the port basin. The dimensions of the new platform were not taken into account in the port facility data at the beginning of this infrastructure section.

The port has good multimodal connections . The freight centers at Nola and Marcianise as well as Naples Airport are important in this context .

Small ferries at Beverello
View of the Stazione Marittima
Middle of the port
Container terminal at Bausan pier

Port and traffic development

In terms of passenger numbers, Naples ranked second in Italy behind Messina in 2016 . The relatively high number of over 7.8 million handled passengers (2016) is primarily due to the heavily frequented ferry connections in the Gulf of Naples ( Capri , Ischia ), which are known as the Metropolitana del Mare or "Sea Metro". The strategically favorable location on the Tyrrhenian Sea means that the port is very well integrated into the traffic concept of the Autostrade del Mare or " Motorways of the Sea ", which in this case are in particular ferry connections to Sicily and Sardinia. A large part of the heavy goods traffic between Sicily and continental Italy can thus be moved from the road to the water. The third important segment is that of cruises with 1.3 million passengers in 2016. The Stazione Marittima was once a terminal for transoceanic scheduled traffic, which was gradually abandoned in the 1960s due to the increase in air traffic. At the Stazione Marittima , cruise ships have taken the place of transatlantic liners in recent decades . The location of the cruise terminal in front of the old town and its tourist attractions, as well as the ferry connections to the islands in the Gulf of Naples that are offered next to the Stazione Marittima , favor the development of this segment, which is of great economic importance for the city. Around 30 cruise lines are represented at the Stazione Marittima , including subsidiaries of Carnival Corporation & plc , MSC Kreuzfahrten and Royal Caribbean Cruises .

In terms of cargo handling, the port is less strong with 22 million tons in 2016. Naples is part of the TEN-T core network corridor Scandinavia - Mediterranean and is close to the important shipping route Gibraltar - Suez , but many other Mediterranean ports can point to a strategically favorable location and good transport connections. The relative weakness of the southern Italian economy is of little help. Further inhibiting factors are of an infrastructural nature. The steadily increasing size of the ships requires a port expansion, which was only discussed for a long time. The urgently needed deepening of the harbor basin was only tackled in 2017. The expansion of the industrial port in a south-easterly direction is rejected by the neighboring towns because they do not want their free access to the Gulf to be blocked by new industrial plants. All that remains is modernization and better use of the existing port facilities and closer cooperation with the port of Salerno. The handling of goods in Naples is made up of roughly a quarter of general and solid bulk cargo, liquid bulk cargo, containers and RoRo traffic .

The port also has a problem with the relatively high demand for yacht berths . One tries on the one hand to win the remaining naval base at the San Vincenzo pier to solve this problem and on the other hand to refer yachts and boats to smaller neighboring ports in Pozzuoli or Castellammare di Stabia. In the western district of Bagnoli , piers for cargo ships were built at the local steelworks in the 1960s . After the demolition of the steelworks, the construction of a yacht harbor was considered there.

The military use of the port of Naples today tends towards zero, apart from the coast guard (and comparable security organs) and the occasional visit to larger warships.

history

The history of the port can be traced back to the Greek colonization of the Gulf in the 8th century BC. In this Greek epoch the port reached its maximum development in the 5th century BC. When it was one of the most important in the Mediterranean . More is known about the nature and use of the port in Roman times , among other things because five Roman ships and remains of the ancient quay walls were found during work on the Municipio underground station . We know of the existence of two docks. At today's Stazione Marittima there was the commercial port of Portus Vulpulum and next to it the small military port of Arcina (which should not be confused with the Roman naval base in Misenum ). The port experienced a new boom under the Normans and Staufers . The Republic of Pisa set up a trading post at Portus Vulpulum , which is why it was soon called Porto dei Pisani . Another expansion took place under the rule of the House of Anjou : Charles II had a pier built in front of Castel Nuovo between 1302 and 1307, which is still called Molo Angioino in its current form . The expansion and fortification of the port continued by the Aragons and then the Spaniards , whose crown belonged to the Kingdom of Naples for a long time. Particularly noteworthy is the Lanterna del Molo lighthouse on the Angioino pier. The tower is immortalized on many vedute as a former landmark of the port ; Rebuilt several times in the early modern times after being destroyed in the war and fires, it had to give way to the Stazione Marittima in the 1930s . An old pier had been removed beforehand, which had been built under Alfonso V (I) from the lighthouse in an easterly direction and which for a long time formed a central constitutive element of the port. In the 18th century, the port was again one of the most important in Europe. The Angioino pier was lengthened again, to the west of it the military port and the arsenal were expanded and to the east a new trading port with the Immacolatella pier was created, named after a small statue of the Virgin Mary.

After the unification of Italy in 1861 initially resulted in an economic decline for Naples and its port, efforts were made to revitalize it from the 1880s and expanded it to the east. The port received a rail connection, a power station and a first Stazione Marittima on the Pisacane pier (also called Immacolatella Nuova ). Decisive for the resurgence in the years after the turn of the century was the work of the port captain Augusto Witting, who was supported by the politician and southern Italy expert Francesco Saverio Nitti . During fascism , the port was rebuilt and expanded, sometimes drastically, because it was wanted to become the center of shipping to the colonies . This endeavor was put to an end with the entry into the Second World War . After the war damage had been repaired and a brief revival, a phase of stagnation followed, which was related to economic factors such as the steel crisis and the oil price crisis , but also to negative political and social framework conditions. The political framework conditions could only be improved in the 1990s, with visible effects on the cityscape, also because it was not only possible to overcome the isolation between the city and the port, but also to connect them as an essential prerequisite for an urban, economic and to see social renaissance. Isolated setbacks have not significantly changed this positive development in the area of the old town and the port.