The Bourbons and Naples. Historical perspective of a cultural chain interrupted

The rediscovery of the roots of Italian culture in the several forms of its historical-artistic heritage, of its productive landscapes, of its know-how, of the made in Italy - skillful entanglement of history, traditions and beauty - matches the need to foresee "cultural industries" and "creative chains" as a forward-looking approach to the topic of growth of our country in a European scenario that is still partly to be defined. The identity origins of reference for a truly united Europe, despite its necessary differences, must be traced to a cultural dimension that overcomes the crushing data of individual economic policies to recover the sense of a broader and more flexible cultural operation capable of reprogramming the terms of being together in a common project of competitive growth and development. Often, however, it is the perspective from which the facts are observed that must be modified; the history of our past is full of concrete examples in which a vision of a possible future has been traced with coherence, method and foresight, and it is from this historical perspective that we must start again. This paper will address the issue of "cultural industry" implanted in Naples by the Bourbons at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries according to a cultural and economic vision revealing. From publishing, to the local industrial systems -such as the Royal Silk Factory of San Leucio or to the experimental farm of Carditello-, to laboratories implanted in the Albergo dei Poveri, to the school boating, takes shape the development of a formidable production system diffused in the area, in some cases combined with cooperation with privates, which identified in the cultural roots of the tradition of art history and local craft the levers for the development and future growth. The theme of the cultural industry as an element capable of introducing, in the wider economic system, a "market" of beauty and culture was started in the eighteenth century not only as an instrumentum regni but as a project capable of triggering productive processes capable of feeding innovation, research and creativity within a "knowledge pole" supported by the policies of the Kingdom. The rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the excavation campaign that ensued, gave rise to studies and research in most fields of knowledge and artistic production, giving new energy and inspiration to painters, sculptors, academies, craftsmen who reproduced its shapes, themes and techniques.