Newest Naples Subway Station Designed by Artist Anish Kapoor
The Monte Sant’Angelo Subway Station, which opened on September 11, is part of the larger infrastructure project coordinated by Achille Bonito Oliva.
Naples metropolitan museum. Another piece has been added to the great cultural project that began more than two decades ago and has transformed the metro stations in the Campania capital into stations of art. The latest stop, created by artist Anish Kapoor, goes beyond the skin of the city, enters the bowels of the earth, and is deliberately designed to engage in a dialogue between the urban that is seen and the urban that is not seen, stimulating the imagination and referring to Dante's poetics of the Divine Comedy. The station that opened a few weeks ago, is located in Monte Sant'Angelo and is the result of a collaboration between the British artist of Indian and Iraqi descent and Future Systems, the former London studio of Jan Kaplický and Amanda Levete.
Monte Sant'Angelo is the first stop on Line 7, serving the Fuorigrotta and Soccavo neighborhoods, but it is nothing new, since the facility was already envisioned in 2002. Work began in 2008, but was halted a few years later due to a bureaucratic dispute. (That same year, Future Systems folded and one year later Kaplický died in Prague.) The work—called La Bocca (The Mouth)—saw the light between 2016 and 2017, materializing in a “symbolic gateway to the unknown.” The sculpture, which is, moreover, the terminus of the route that will connect Campi Flegrei and Cumana, is made of Corten steel and resembles a soft body.
Kapoor in fact imagined the station not as a mere functional node, but also as a place capable of evoking mythical suggestions and encouraging reflections on the relationship between body, space and urban landscape. “In the city of Mount Vesuvius and Dante’s mythical entrance to the Inferno,” said the artist, “I found it important to try and deal with what it really means to go underground.”
The Line 7 route includes the construction of three new stations: Monte Sant'Angelo (140 million euros); Parco San Paolo, opening in 2027 (80 million euros); and Terracina, expected to be completed in 2029 (170 million euros). The total amount for these works amounts to 390 million euros.
The project will be completed with the future construction of the Mediterranean Games Station and connection to the Mostra station, which is already operational on the Cumana line and an interchange point with Line 6 of the Naples Metro.
Monte Sant'Angelo joins twenty stations designed by international architects—including Gae Aulenti, Dominique Perrault, Atelier Mendini, and Álvaro Siza—and made with contributions from artists such as Jannis Kounellis, Joseph Kosuth, Mimmo Paladino, Sol LeWitt, and Mario Merz. Critic and historian Achille Bonito Oliva is artistic coordinator of the project.
Designed and conceived by architect Oscar Tusquets Blanca and opened in 2012, Toledo is perhaps the most famous of the stations. Inside, large mosaics by William Kentridge and Costantino Aureliano Buccolieri recount myths, history and daily life: Pompeii, Vesuvius, San Gennaro, and scenes of Neapolitan life. Designed by Alessandro Mendini with the collaboration of designer Karim Rashid, the Università station welcomes travelers with white tiles engraved with words coined in the last fifty years and related to the language of communication and the digital world.
The newest station, after Kapoor's, is Centro Direzionale: Opened in April 2025, it establishes itself as the modern jewel of the Line 1. Designed by Benedetta Tagliabue – EMBT, it combines bold geometries, natural lighting and materials such as glass, steel, and colored tiles.
