Naples Metro Station Swaps a Hidden Entrance for a Timber-Roofed Plaza

Spanish architecture studio EMBT has completed the Naples Underground Central Station in Italy, according to Dezeen, which reported the project on 12 November 2026.

The station sits inside Centro Direzionale, a business district in Naples that the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange designed in the 1970s. The new building covers 10,000 square metres. It was designed to replace a metro entrance that was previously easy to miss, and to add a public plaza in its place.

The roof is the first thing visitors will notice. It is built from arches and beams of glue-laminated timber, which means layers of wood bonded together to form strong, curved shapes. Parts of the timber structure rest on the existing concrete, and the roof follows the lines of the tracks below.

A vaulted canopy stretches out from the building. It covers the ticket barriers and the routes into the station, then extends toward the paved plaza outside. For people waiting in the open, that means a covered space before they reach the platforms.

The floor is finished in Etna and Trani limestone, which the designers describe as local stone. Underground, the platforms take a different tone. Their walls are lined with striped panels in red, orange and yellow. The designers based the colours on Pompeian frescoes, the painted wall decorations found in Pompeii, the ancient Roman town buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

The project has also been shortlisted in the Infrastructure and transport category of the Dezeen Awards 2026. Shortlisting means it is one of the finalists in that category. The winners have not been named.

For daily riders, the change is mostly about getting in and out. A covered approach, a bigger open space and a station that sits in clear view of the street are the main differences. The rest is the kind of detail a passenger only notices on the way down the stairs: the timber overhead, the stone underfoot and the striped colours waiting on the platform.