San Gennaro Vesuviano City Award

An award that tells the story of San Gennaro Vesuviano

The San Gennaro Vesuviano City Award was created to give a public face to the stories of those who, starting from this municipality in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Campania, have taken the name of the Vesuvius area far and wide. It is neither a food festival nor a street fair: it is a civic ceremony hosted in the City Hall Council Chamber, which over the years has become a defining event for the entire community.

The initiative is promoted by the Municipal Administration led by Mayor Antonio Russo and is part of the Vesuvius Tradition, Art, and Culture project, included in the metropolitan events calendar with the support of the Metropolitan City of Naples. The stated goal is to value the civic, cultural, and human commitment of those who have distinguished themselves.

How the list of awardees is created

The names do not arrive by chance. A committee of experts evaluates nominations based on regulations that also allow citizens to suggest deserving people and stories: in this sense, the award is a participatory tool, where the town chooses those who represent its collective pride.

Award categories

The range of awards is broad and changes slightly from year to year, following the excellence the territory produces. Recurring categories include:

• Keys to the City — the highest honor, reserved for prominent institutional figures;
• Honorary Citizenship, including posthumous, for individuals of great human and cultural value linked to the town;
• Legality and Justice, for magistrates who have distinguished themselves in their careers at national courts;
• Information and Culture, for journalists, writers, and cultural workers;
• Sport, dedicated to local athletes who have reached professional levels;
• Science, Business, and School, for researchers, entrepreneurs, and school principals;
• Posthumous Awards, for those who are no longer with us but have left a lasting mark on the community.

The 2026 edition: Keys to the City for Gaetano Manfredi

The fifth edition, held on Friday, March 20, 2026, starting at 6:00 PM, marked a step up in scale. The Keys to the City were presented to Gaetano Manfredi, Mayor of Naples and the Metropolitan City, who was welcomed into the hall to the notes of Napule è. The posthumous honorary citizenship was awarded to Professor Michele D'Avino, a reference figure of Vesuvius culture.

Alongside them, magistrates Caterina Ambrosino and Francesca Iervolino, Rai journalist and writer Vincenza Emira Festa, and former professional footballer Michele Nappi were honored. Posthumous awards remembered physicist Aniello Nappi, author of world-class research in high-energy physics, entrepreneurs Luigi Iervolino and Mario Felice Nusco, who were awarded the title of Knight of Labor, and school principal and writer Mario Sbarra. The evening was punctuated by video screenings, musical interludes by Mario Maglione, and closed with the Italian National Anthem.

The 2025 precedent

The fourth edition, hosted in the council chamber on April 12, 2025, had already shown the plural vocation of the award: from the La Madonnina nursing home, recognized as a local healthcare excellence, to the academic profiles of Mariasanta Napolitano and Angelina Nunziata, up to the special mention for painter Ahmad Alaa Eddin, who has lived in the town for over thirty years.

The town and its context

San Gennaro Vesuviano is located at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, in the plain that connects the Vesuvius area to the Nola district, a short distance from Ottaviano, Palma Campania, and San Giuseppe Vesuviano. It is a municipality with a manufacturing and agricultural tradition: it is precisely the intertwining of business, school, and culture that gives the Award its most authentic character.

Why it is worth attending

Those looking for fireworks and stalls will not find them. The San Gennaro Vesuviano City Award is an event of words and memory, which in a few hours provides a portrait of a community through the biographies of those who represent it. For the curious visitor, it is also an opportunity to enter the City Hall and grasp, live, how a town in the Neapolitan province tells its own identity.