About 800 students of the Mattei institute in Caserta, accompanied by teachers, marched through the city to the Prefecture to protest the closure of the historic school site on via Settembrini and to ask for a return to a single site.
The demonstration took place on 8 October. The route began near the former Macrico area and continued through central Caserta to the Prefecture, where the school community sought institutional commitments on timing, funding and reconstruction.
The marchers carried the message "La scuola è un diritto" — school is a right — presenting the closure not only as a building problem but as a question of access to everyday school life.
Why students and teachers protested
According to the reporting on the march, the central concern is the division of the institute among three sites following the closure of via Settembrini.
The school community points to inefficient transport between sites, incomplete relocation of laboratories and insufficient gym facilities. Protesters asked for a solution that would allow the institute to return to one site and requested an institutional discussion table to follow the situation.
The three current locations identified in the reporting are via Amendola in Puccianiello, via Petrarca in Centurano and viale Melvin Jones in the former Saint Gobain area.
Daily impact across three sites
The split affects lessons, travel and practical training.
Reported logistical effects include longer journeys for students and staff, additional costs for families, difficulties in using laboratories and particular problems for evening-course students. Laboratories and gyms are among the facilities most cited by the school community, because they are difficult to replicate equally across temporary locations.
This is why the request for a single site is central to the protest: the issue raised by students and teachers is how teaching, workshops and school activities can be accommodated across the current sites during any future reconstruction period without losing continuity.
A 14.5 million euro reconstruction proposal
Separately from the march, the Province of Caserta has approved a 14.5 million euro project for the demolition and reconstruction of the via Settembrini site.
The project was prepared for possible submission to the second phase of the regional "Scuola Viva in cantiere" programme. It describes the proposed intervention for the historic site; it does not by itself establish that the financing has been awarded.
That distinction matters for readers following the case. The available reporting confirms the scale and nature of the proposal, but not a confirmed funding decision, a start date or a completion date for reconstruction.
What remains unclear
Several points were not established in the reporting available for this article.
First, neither regional nor national funding for the 14.5 million euro project is confirmed as awarded. Second, there is no confirmed timetable for demolition, reconstruction or return to via Settembrini. Third, the technical basis behind the building's closure is described with different scope and detail across the sources and would need to be checked against the Province's technical documents.
The final outcome of the meeting at the Prefecture, including any binding commitments on timing, funding or how students would be accommodated across the current sites during reconstruction, is also not fully documented in the acquired material.
For now, the documented position of the school community is clear: students and teachers want a defined path back to a single, fully equipped school, with transparent information on funding and timing.
