Giardini di Cataldo
Sorrento (NA)
Hidden gemNature & hiking
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.
More gems in Sorrento
Nature & hikingVallone 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.
- 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.
History & archaeologyMuseo 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.
Sacred artChiostro di San Francesco
Sorrento (NA)
Interlaced arches in tufo (volcanic tuff) and a bougainvillea spilling over the portico: in the fourteenth-century cloister of San Francesco the convent's silence opens onto the light of Sorrento.
More gems: Nature & hiking
Nature & hikingOrto 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.
- Nature & hiking
Pedamentina 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.
- Nature & hiking
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.
Nature & hikingVilla 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.
- Nature & hiking
Acquario 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.
Nature & hikingSolfatara
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.