History of the Club

Founded on 11 December 1924 at the Bertolini Palace Hotel, Rotary Club Napoli received its charter from Rotary International on 6 January 1925.

Its first president was Francesco Bertolini. From its early years the club stood out as “a true workshop of ideas”: under Alfonso Mercurio (1926-1928) it fostered the Naples Orchestral Concerts Society, the autonomy of the San Carlo theatre and the Southern Motorways Company, which promoted the Naples-Pompeii-Salerno motorway.

In 1929 the club hosted the 5th district conference in Naples, where jurists of the Neapolitan School drafted the celebrated “Declaration of Naples”, later adopted at the Dallas International Convention and a cornerstone of Rotary philosophy.

After a self-dissolution in 1938, the club was re-established on 8 July 1944 and devoted itself to the moral and material reconstruction of Naples. From the 1970s onward it fostered Rotaract and Inner Wheel and delivered many service projects, including the 3A Programme for abdominal aortic aneurysm prevention, computer courses for the blind and the Quality-of-Life Observatory with the University of Naples Federico II.

In 2024 Rotary Club Napoli celebrated its Centenary: one hundred years of friendship, service and civic commitment for the city and the world.