Cratere degli Astroni
Napoli (NA)
KnownVolcanoes
The story
An extinct crater enclosed by wooded walls, with small lakes and silent trails: once a Bourbon hunting reserve, today an oasis where the woodpecker marks the time.
Access
€ oasis
More gems in Napoli
Sacred artCappella Sansevero (Cristo Velato)
Napoli (NA)
Beneath a veil of marble that still seems to breathe, Sanmartino's Cristo Velato rests in the chapel's half-light, and the whiteness of the stone deceives every eye.
Sacred artDuomo di Napoli
Napoli
Three times a year the city holds its breath as the blood of San Gennaro waits to liquefy, among Gothic naves and the gold of the chapel devoted to him.
Sacred artCappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro
Napoli
Behind a bronze gate lie silverware, gems and the jewel-studded mitre of the saint: a treasure heaped up over centuries by the devotion of Naples.
Sacred artChiesa del Gesù Nuovo
Napoli
The facade of pyramid-cut piperno stone hides symbols carved into the blocks, while inside the Baroque bursts out in marble and in the memory of the physician Giuseppe Moscati.
Sacred artChiostro di Santa Chiara
Napoli
A garden of pillars clad in yellow and blue majolica, where lemon pergolas and eighteenth-century scenes painted on the tiles keep the noise of the city at bay.
Sacred artChiesa di Santa Luciella ai Librai (teschio con le orecchie)
Napoli
In the crypt of a small church rediscovered in the maze of the Librai rests the skull with ears, which the faithful believed could listen to their prayers.
More gems: Volcanoes
VolcanoesVesuvio — Gran Cono
Ercolano
The last stretch climbs on foot over the scree to the rim of the crater, where the warm breath of the earth mixes with the view of the whole Gulf of Naples.
VolcanoesMonte Epomeo
Ischia
The roof of the island at almost eight hundred metres: from the green tufo summit, with its hermitage carved into the rock, the eye takes in all of Ischia and the bay as far as Capri.
- Volcanoes
Vulcano di Roccamonfina
Roccamonfina (CE)
An extinct volcano clothed in chestnut groves, where the crater has become a plateau and every trail smells of dark earth and ancient woods.
VolcanoesMonte Nuovo
Pozzuoli (NA)
Born in a single night from a sixteenth-century eruption, the youngest mountain of the Campi Flegrei holds within its crater a green silence looking out over the gulf of Pozzuoli.
- Volcanoes
Monte Rotaro (cratere e fumarole)
Ischia (NA)
A crater 350 metres across and 127 deep, today covered in holm oaks and myrtle. Puffs of vapour still rise from the ground, and among the fumarole grows a plant that hardly grows anywhere else in Europe.
- Volcanoes
Cratere del Fondo d'Oglio
Ischia (NA)
A perfectly circular hollow hidden in the wood: inside they still grow vines, at the bottom of a volcano. Whoever descends cannot tell where they are until they look up.