Giardini di Cataldo
Sorrento (NA)
Hidden gemNature
The story
You stroll beneath pergolas of lemon and orange trees in the heart of Sorrento, amid the scent of citrus and a taste of limoncello made at home by the family that tends the garden.
Hours and prices
Free entry.
More gems in Sorrento
NatureVallone dei Mulini
Sorrento
A canyon in the heart of the town where an old grain mill crumbles under the vegetation, wrapped in ferns and damp air, in a microclimate that time has forgotten.
◆ MuseumsMuseo Correale
Sorrento
In the family villa of the Correale counts: porcelain, inlaid wood and eighteenth-century views of Naples, and a garden that runs down to a belvedere over the sea.
◆ History & archaeologySedile Dominova
Sorrento
The only surviving noble sedile in Campania, an open sixteenth-century loggia with a frescoed dome and majolica tiles, today a club for the town's elders on the corner of two alleys.
- Villages
Marina Grande di Sorrento
Sorrento
Below the town's cliffs, the old fishermen's borgo (old village) with houses faded by the salt, boats hauled ashore and trattorias fragrant with frying.
- Sacred art
Villa Comunale di Sorrento e Chiesa/Chiostro di San Francesco
Sorrento
A terrace suspended over the gulf beside the fourteenth-century cloister of San Francesco, where interlacing arches and bougainvillea frame Vesuvius and the notes of the summer concerts.
More gems: Nature
◆ NatureOrto Botanico
via Foria
Founded in the Napoleonic age, the botanical garden on via Foria lines up glasshouses, palms and rare species across twelve hectares: a green breath a step away from the traffic.
◆ NaturePedamentina di San Martino
Vomero→centro
A fourteenth-century stairway dropping from the hill of San Martino down to the city: hundreds of steps through vegetable plots, gardens and glimpses of the bay — one of the finest urban paths in Naples.
NatureVilla Comunale
Riviera di Chiaia
The garden stretched out along the sea at Chiaia: avenues of holm oaks, benches and old statues, with the gulf breathing beyond the iron railing.
NatureAcquario Anton Dohrn
Riviera di Chiaia
The oldest aquarium in Europe, opened in 1874 inside the Villa Comunale: historic tanks inhabited only by the fauna of the Gulf of Naples, behind the glass.
NatureSolfatara
Pozzuoli
The ground breathes: hissing fumaroles, mud that boils up and a smell of sulphur reminding you how alive the earth is beneath the Campi Flegrei.
- ◆ Nature
Vigna di San Martino
collina S. Martino
One of the largest urban vineyards in Europe, worked by the Carthusians since the fourteenth century: seven hectares of vines, citrus and olive trees hanging over the bay, a step from the city's chaos.