In the Sala Giunta of Palazzo San Giacomo, the Deputy Mayor with responsibility for Toponymy Laura Lieto awarded the Medal of the City of Naples in memory of the architect Alessandro Rimini, designer and director of the Cardarelli Hospital works begun in 1930 and concluded in 1934 to his daughter Liliana Lagonigro Rimini
“Today we had a beautiful moment – declared the Deputy Mayor Laura Lieto – together with Liliana Rimini and Leonardo di Mauro and I also want to thank all my colleagues from the toponymy commission. I am an architect and I had never delved into the meaning of this work.
The story that Liliana has given us today is an extraordinary story because associating Cardarelli with such a story, not only human, with the portrait that his daughter made of it is truly wonderful. A bold man who leaves suffering behind, he is the generation of those years, of people who were able to go through that terrible moment in history with a wonderful lightness and will to live. And this is the private figure of the father and of the man.
From the point of view of public history instead, because this is the type of work that is done in toponymy, the names of streets and places, the names that often have dates underneath, have clues and therefore serve the passer-by and the curious to open a window, they are precious indicators of how the city is a crossroads of extraordinary stories.
It is therefore truly significant that the Cardarelli hospital is the place of a story that is intertwined with the shoah, with the deportations, but also with the best Italian youth of those years; I am particularly happy to be here to represent the administration and I am particularly happy because today Naples is doing its part in pulling Alessandro Rimini’s name from oblivion and what he did and this is a civil duty and a great privilege that we have.
Thank you very much Liliana Rimini for being here with us this morning.“