Uffizi Gallery Turns Jailed Mafia Boss’s Naples Home into Art Museum—That’s Weird

Is Naples closer to freeing itself from the grip of the Camorra?

The Scarface-inspired home of imprisoned Camorra boss Egidio “Brutus” Coppola will become a temporary museum, the Guardian reports.

The show titled “The Light Wins Over the Shadow” opens in Naples on June 22. Dedicated to the memory of a local priest, Peppe Diana, who was murdered by the Camorra in 1994, the exhibition will include works lent by the Florentine Uffizi Gallery and others.

The seemingly unlikely collaboration of venue and lender came to be due to a chance meeting between Renato Natale, the anti-Camorra major of Casal di Principe, and Uffizi Director, Antonio Natali.

Natale has become recognized for being outspoken in his opposition to the Camorra as the town has long been a power center for the Casalesi clan. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, on the other hand, fell victim to an attack from the Scillian Mafia, Cosa Nostra, in 1993, which resulted in five deaths and $1 million in damages.

“Only through the promotion of civil society can we build a community that will always be ready to protect itself from this kind of infiltration,” Major Natale told the Guardian. “We as a people are kind of like a stammerer who has had a deep, deep trauma as a child. Here we had a trauma, that was Camorra, for everybody.“

There are hopes locally that the museum will become a permanent institution to commemorate the so-called resistance against the Camorra, with Natali stating that this is “one of the main aspirations of the Uffizi.”

The project is just one of many like it in the Naples area, which is seeking to liberate itself from the hold that the Camorra has maintained on the region for decades. Another re-use of mafia assets has seen a nearby field that was used by mafia boss “O Pazzo,” or “Crazy One,” to raise horses used by a co-operative to produce organic buffalo mozzarella.


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