A spark that set the neighborhood in motion again

Progetto Luce was born during the 2020 lockdown, when cultural and tourism activities in the Rione Sanità came to a stop and the area’s fragilities became impossible to ignore. At that moment, the project chose not to withdraw, but to put vision, skills and trust back into circulation.

Out of that experience came La Sorte, a cooperative that turned a temporary intervention into a stable presence. Not just an emergency response, but a concrete way to create new places, new jobs and a shared responsibility toward the neighborhood.

The crisis forced a stop, but it also opened a space to rethink the area and turn a fragile moment into a chance for renewal.

For more than ten years, the Rione Sanità has been shaped by a grassroots regeneration process built around the value of its cultural and human resources. That path has brought the neighborhood back into the city’s flows, but it has also made one question more urgent: how can growth generate continuity instead of remaining concentrated in only a few places?

Progetto Luce enters exactly at that point. It worked on a part of the Rione that had remained more marginal, connecting historical and artistic heritage, training and an everyday presence on the ground. The aim was not only to reopen spaces, but to create the conditions for broader participation and for new work rooted in the area itself.

The project brought together training, cultural activation and organizational support. It was not a single action, but a sequence of coordinated steps that reconnected people, places and concrete opportunities. In that sense, Progetto Luce worked as a regeneration lab, where learning and care for the sites took shape as real, everyday practices.

Interconnected areas of intervention

• Reopening Chiesa di Sant'Aspreno ai Crociferi as a new cultural gateway into the Rione.
• Reactivating Chiesa dei Cristallini through murals and community works.
• Bringing Basilica di San Severo into a wider, more connected visit system.

Planned actions

• Reactivate access to the Rione Sanità starting from Sant'Aspreno.
• Connect San Severo, Cristallini and Sant'Aspreno within one shared visit narrative.
• Carry out compliance and requalification works in the sites.
• Activate two info points to support visitors.
• Launch multidisciplinary workshops led by Cooperativa La Paranza.

Completed actions

1. Safety work and reopening of Chiesa di Sant'Aspreno ai Crociferi.
2. Opening of the museum-lab Jago Museum inside Sant'Aspreno.
3. Safety work and reopening of Chiesa dei Cristallini.
4. Creation of murals and community works in Chiesa dei Cristallini.
5. Inclusion of Basilica di San Severo in the neighborhood visit routes.
6. Opening of info points and ticket offices in the recovered sites.
7. Establishment of the community cooperative La Sorte.

The strength of Progetto Luce lies not only in its visible results, but in the continuity it managed to generate. It set symbolic places back in motion, transferred skills to a new generation of young people from the neighborhood and built an organizational form able to last. It is from that concrete, everyday transition that La Sorte was born.