"We saw the king and queen at mass in the court chapel at Portici. We also saw the Vesuvio ... "
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote these words, from Naples, in a letter dated 19 May 1770 to his sister Nannerl. At fourteen, Mozart went with his father on an educational (and self-promotional) journey in Italy, stopping for quite a while in Campania and visiting Portici, where he was a guest of the Royal family and had the opportunity to perform on the organ which, even today, is kept in the court’s chapel. Places of great beauty, originally intended for a select few close to the court but, through music, made visible and accessible to the general public. MozArtBox, consistent with its celebratory intent, wants to live and let live music in a transversal way, in synergy with other forms of expression and with no limits of genre nor style. The figure of the composer from Salzburg becomes a symbol of freedom of expression and the recurring thread of an event that puts it as central theme around which, quite naturally, a thick series of variations unfolds.

LAUNCH OF THE BOX MOZART 2014: GAETANO CURRERI, URI CAINE, SARAH JANE MORRIS AND FABIO CONCATO AMONG THE GUESTS
From the 10th of  September the Palace of Portici hosts the historical festival

Once again the Royal Palace of Portici becomes a stage and hosts eight extraordinary concerts: also this year MozArt Box confirms its identity as an event with a strong cultural-touristic vocation.
Sponsored by the City of Portici and co-financed by the Region of Campania under the P.O. FERS 2007/13, the MozArt Box 2014 will be held from the 10th to the 18th of September with a program of events managed by Stephen Valanzuolo who, inspired by the figure of the brilliant composer icon of freedom of expression, will once again offer an interesting mix of musical genres and styles.
The Solis String Quartet and Gaetano Curreri will open the eighth edition of the summer session of the festival: wednesday, the 10th of September they will perform "Canzoni da camera" an elegant and stylish concert in which the singer of the Stadio and the Neapolitan quartet will pay homage to the Beatles, Lucio Dalla but also the many successes Curreri has written for Vasco Rossi, Patty Pravo, Irene Grandi and, of course, the Stadio.
Thursday, the 11th of September will be an important event for the international piano scene with the show "Bach for babies" that will see the performance of Ramin Bahrami, in a re-reading of Bach but also Gluck, Mozart and Brahms.
Friday, the 12th of September on stage another international star who manages to happily move  between different musical backgrounds: on the stage set in the exedra of the Palace of Portici, Uri Caine will perform as jazz pianist and will revive the atmosphere of the historic New York club ‘Village Vanguard’ accompanied by Mark Helias at the bass and Clarence Penn on drums.
Sunday, 14th of September MozArt Box 2014 will be the setting for an elegant and eclectic overview of Neapolitan songs, rock and reggae thanks to the presence of Raiz and Fausto Mesolella who will present songs from their latest album "Dago Red".
Monday, the 15th of September once again the limelight will be on Neapolitan music with the performance of the Elisabetta Serio’s quartet: for the occasion, Pino Daniele’s pianist will see her performance enhanced by the presence of Sarah Jane Morris, testimony of a collaboration started in '97 on Ronnie Scott's stage in London.
Tuesday, the 16th of September more jazz with the performances of Enrico Rava who will perform live the project "Rava tribe", now a disc of ECM; he is  accompanied by a quartet which features Gianluca Petrella.
Wednesday, the 17th of September another interesting project fusing Italian singer-songwriter music and jazz with a concert by Fabio Concato and Fabrizio Bosso: two very well known names for an event of engaging musical synergies.
Thursday, the 18th of September will close the 2014 MozArt Box edition with the captivating performance of Muzuluart, a project that unites the Austrian pianist Roland Guggenbichler and the three singers from Zimbabwe, Vusa Mkhaya Ndlovu, Blessings Nqo Nkomo and Ramadu.
By combining all the intensity and spirituality of African tradition to Mozart’s music, MoZuluArt has won an exclusive space in the landscape of contemporary music.
All performances of MozArt Box 2014 will be held in the exedra of the Palace of Portici, starting at 21.00. Tickets are € 10,00 except the Art MoZulu concert that has free admission.

The Municipality of Portici has a population of 55,365, covers a total area of ​​452 hectares with a perimeter of about 13 km and it borders with Naples, S. Giorgio a Cremano and Herculaneum. In 2002, the Municipality applied for and obtained, by decree of the President of the Italian Republic, the title of city.
According to some authors the name of Portici derives from the forum’s arcades of the ancient Herculaneum. Instead, according to an ancient legend, Portici was founded by the Romans around the villa of Quintus Pontius Aquila, a Roman nobleman, a conspirer against Caesar, who fell in the battle of Modena 43 BC.
Confirming this legend, there is a finding, found under the ruins of the Mascabruno Palace, depicting an eagle, currently the emblem of the municipal coat of arms, which bears, under its claws, the initials Q.P.A.
Portici was a small country house, that in 1415, at the behest of the Queen Giovanna II, was ceded to the Neapolitan nobleman and adventurer Sergianni Caracciolo along with other territories of the Vesuvius area, in exchange for money.
First an estate, then a Captaincy from 1454, Portici became a fief in 1638, when Anna Carafa, vice queen and Capitana of Portici, bought the vesuvian houses put on the sale by the King. The Feudal era was a very dark one for the ‘porticesi’ (the name of the local inhabitants) as were the years under the rule of the cruel brothers Troise, to whom the Carafa family granted in rent the vesuvians fiefs from 1671 to 1674.
This period was also hard for the disastrous eruption of the Vesuvius in 1631, which claimed the lives of four thousand men and six thousand animals.  
To commemorate this tragedy, the scholar Father Orso who lived in the house of the Jesuits, was commissioned by the viceroy of composing the text of two tombstones. The first was walled in the border between Torre del Greco and Torre Annunziata, the other was placed in Portici in front of what is now via Giordano, and then later moved to the entrance of Via del Granatello (now via Gianturco).
Portici freed itself from feudal rule by tightening an alliance with the neighbouring towns of Resina and Torre del Greco.
The 17th of December 1698 the inhabitants of Portici, Resina and Torre del Greco, together, claimed the right of first refusal on the purchase of their land and gathered, in each family, the necessary funds.
The 18th of May 1699 the President of the ‘Regia Camera della Summaria’, Don Michele Vargas Maciucca decreed that Portici, Resina, and Torre del Greco were free from the feudal bond.
The golden age of Portici, free and autonomous, began with the arrival of Charles III of Bourbon who, in 1738, decided to build there his summer residence. Around the Royal Palace the Neapolitan aristocracy built their own homes, resulting in the architectural phenomenon known as “Ville Vesuviane del Miglio d'Oro".
Located on the slopes of Vesuvius in an extremely fertile area and with mild climate, Portici overlooks the Gulf of Naples.
Holiday resort in Roman times, the first certain historical note on this part of Naples is dated 728 AD, but the settlement gained some importance only in the Middle Ages. The town belonged for centuries to several medieval lords, among which we can mention the Carafae, the Migliano.
Seriously damaged by the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631, Portici flourished during the time of Charles III of Bourbon who, in 1738, started  the construction of the famous Villa Reale.
In the Bourbon period Portici’s economy experienced a rapid development that changed the appearance of the town and boosted sea and land traffic.
The first sign of this development was the creation of the Bourbon Port Granatello began in February of 1774.
The most obvious symbol of the city’s development, however, was the inauguration the 3rd of October 1839 of the first Italian railway line: the Naples-Portici line. It was 7,411 meters long and was covered for the first time in 11 minutes by two trains pulled by twin locomotives, Bayard and Vesuvio, designed by the engineer Armand Bayard de la Vingtrie, following the prototype of the famous Rocket of the Englishman George Stephenson's.
Ferdinand II of Bourbon in the 40s of the XIX century, built a rail factory in Pietrarsa emblem of the industrialization process initiated by the King in the wake of the success of the application of the steam engine.
Since 1873 the Royal Palace houses the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Naples.
Portici has today an economy based mainly on agriculture (cereals, vegetables, fruits, wine, olives oil), but there are also processing industries such as flour mills, pasta factories, canning factories and shipyards. It has a good commercial port, an inland agricultural products market and owns some industries (polygraphic, textile, chemical, pasta, wood and clothing).
The most interesting architectural site of Portici is the Villa Reale: its park is the headquarters of the Botanical garden, an institution of great ecological and scientific importance.
Last but not least, the National Railway Museum of Pietrarsa that has enormous historical significance.