INSIDE NAPLES: CHARLES DANCE SHOES
24.02.2026 NAPLES & AROUND
In time, however, La Sanità was itself engulfed by the city, becoming a poor working-class district. Palazzo Sanfelice and a handful of other aristocratic residences were left as crumbling relics of the area's brief reign as Naples' Beverly Hills.
In 1973, a Neapolitan shoemaker opened a small workshop in one corner of Palazzo Sanfelice's courtyard.
At first he and his assistants made everyday walking shoes, but in the mid 1980s they took a gamble and shifted towards the production of dance shoes.
Today the Campesi family is one of Italy's leading European suppliers of quality shoes for serious dancers.
View
Latin dance, tango, salsa and ballroom are just some of the styles they cater for.
Soles are made from water buffalo suede, which is soft and flexible but also hard-wearing. The vast majority of the leather used in soles and uppers is made in Italy.
Grandpa Campesi still works upstairs in the finishing room.
“My sons won't let me retire” he jests.
Downstairs, Gioacchino Campesi is cutting the leather for a pair of men's uppers.
View
“We sell more women's shoes than men's shoes”, he says, “because women change shoes more often. When we set up our stand at dance competitions and events around Europe, male dancers will often only buy a new pair when they're talked into it by their female partners”.
One of the big ironies of the job, Gioacchino says, “is that we spend out working lives making dance shoes – but none of us knows how to dance”.
La Sanità is a very different place now, he says, than it was when he first began to work here for his father in the 1980s. “Once it had such a bad reputation that couriers would refuse to make deliveries here. Now it's in the middle of a cultural renaissance”.
Photos © Roberto Salomone
Stay up to date
A member of
