The mayor of Salerno for 14 years, Alfonso Menna was able to transform the city and revive it from the tremendous flood of 1954, laying the foundations for a model of social and economic development that produced occupation and well-being, even in the presence of shadows.
1890
1998
Art critic
Alfonso Menna was born in Domicella in the Avellinese in 1890 and graduated as a municipal secretary. He was hired to the commune of Salerno with the functions of deputy secretary of section where he served at the general secretariat, then reached the top of the career with the qualification of first-class general secretary.
To date I still live in the memory of the people was his civil commitment in the flood of Salerno of 1954 that saw Menna himself as the first rescuer, so much to be deserved, in 1958, the decoration of the Great Officer Order to the Merit of the Italian Republic.
He joined the Christian Democracy in 1956 and accepted the proposal to apply for the City Council of Salerno in the undetermined elections. Although he could not participate in the election campaign because of a serious injury, arriving in Salerno only a few days before the vote, he was very little enough to subvert every prediction: while being the 23rd of the list, he was the first elected, against MP Carmine De Martino.
In 1968 he was awarded the Medal of Gold to Civil Merit, because “he placed his exceptional capacity as administrator and organizer at the service of the community, promoting and enhancing, with fruitful continuity, every initiative aimed at the process of renewal of the Mezzogiorno and the social and economic development of the city of Salerno. »
With Menna the “new” Salerno was born: he built the much discussed commercial port and the orphanage Umberto I of which he was president, redesigned the Lungomare and Piazza della Concordia, enhancing the public green and the hills, recovered the Castle said of Arechi
and the Fort La Carnale. He revolutionized the city making it dynamic and productive, a continuous and always open construction site, so much to be nicknamed the “South Turin”. It was also a period of construction speculation, however, that to the development suffered some wounds that still is not healed.
His name is also linked to the history of Battipaglia, because he committed himself to the foundation of the Municipality, which he administered until 1931.
