Napoli Festival: Schools closed on Monday and at least 200,000 on the seafront, with the Pope on Tuesday

After winning the championship, the fans' celebration has just begun: immediately after the victory, the prefecture estimates that one million people took to the streets between Naples and the province. On Monday, however, when two open-top buses with the players on board will parade along the Caracciolo seafront, at least 200,000 people are expected. While on Tuesday, as announced by Aurelio De Laurentiis, the team will meet the Pope in Rome.

The details of the parade were finalized in several meetings: the buses with the Napoli team, champions of Italy, will parade from 3 pm along the seafront, with the players disembarking from a boat at Molo Luise to board the vehicles with which they will travel a stretch of about two and a half kilometers, which will be cordoned off and guarded by an impressive security device, made up of a thousand men. At least 200,000 fans are expected to enjoy the parade, of which 150,000 on the seafront and about 50,000 in front of four giant screens set up in some strategic places: in Largo Sermoneta, Piazza Sannazaro, Piazza San Pasquale and Via Partenope (at the height of the former University) - to allow even those who are unable to access it to watch the parade.

On Monday, on the occasion of the parade of the two open-top buses on the Lungomare del Calcio Napoli to celebrate the fourth championship, as arranged in the meeting at the Prefecture in the presence of the mayor, Gaetano Manfredi, there will be the closure of schools of all levels, including nursery schools, in the territory of Municipality 1.

Surprisingly, according to Napoli president Aurelio de Laurentiis himself, the team will meet Pope Leo XIV in Rome: “We will go to the Pope on Tuesday, I didn't want to tell the boys beforehand,” he said the day after winning their fourth Scudetto.

During the night of celebration - in addition to the damage to some monuments, such as the Fontana del Carciofo, which has already been cleaned and made safe - several people were injured or felt ill, none seriously. It is difficult to make an exhaustive estimate, but it seems that 97 people went to the emergency room, to which one death in a road accident must be added. Most of the injured suffered trauma and burns from the fireworks, there is one injured by a knife, another who was run over, many felt ill. In the city's hospitals, they say at 118, there were 8 red codes and 44 yellow codes. "Almost all the people we took to the hospital - said Giuseppe Galano, director of 118 in Naples - had burns from fireworks or intoxication from the smoke bombs used to celebrate, nothing serious".

But a controversy has developed over the injuries over the words of Gian Marco Centinaio, a member of the Northern League and vice president of the Senate, who posted on social media: "120 injuries, assaults, robberies, guns and knives. Something is not working. And luckily they won, otherwise civil war would have broken out". The mayor of Naples, Manfredi, replied: "I think there was some difficulty in providing information. I don't think there were all these injuries. We always have to talk about numbers. We are very proud to be Neapolitans and how we behaved". In support of the words of the mayor, the police commissioner Maurizio Agricola reported that during the night there were 9 robberies with 5 arrests in flagrante delicto and therefore "the response was there both in the management of public order and security". Words echoed by the prefect Michele di Bari “ It was a great celebration of the people, of the community, capable of strengthening friendly relationships between people. The security device - said di Bari - was deployed perfectly. The celebration was not weakened by some robbery, an ill-advised gesture that is part of the ordinariness of a city that saw its citizens as protagonists and that 99% of the time worked perfectly also thanks to the idea of ​​installing maxi screens in 53 other cities of the Province.”