Giardino della Minerva
Salerno
KnownNature & hiking
The story
Terraces of medicinal plants step down towards the gulf: a garden of simples tied to the Scuola Medica Salernitana, where medieval herbalism still breathes among pergolas and fountains.
Access
€
More gems in Salerno
CastlesCastello di Arechi
Salerno
Perched on the Bonadies hill, it has watched over the gulf of Salerno for more than a thousand years: Lombard stone, crenellated towers and the sea stretching to the Costiera Amalfitana on the horizon.
- Sacred art
Duomo di San Matteo e cripta
Salerno
Beneath the Norman naves rest the relics of the evangelist Matthew, in a baroque crypt of marble and mirrors where the half-light turns to gold.
- History & archaeology
Acquedotto Medievale ("Ponti del Diavolo")
Salerno
Pointed arches stride across the valley in the old heart of Salerno: legend says the devil raised them in a single night.
- Street art
Rione Fornelle — Muri d'Autore
Salerno (SA)
In the ancient heart of Salerno the Fornelle quarter has been reborn with 'Muri d'Autore': verses by Alfonso Gatto and other poets turned into murals, where the street reads like a page.
- Street art
Murale di Trotula de Ruggiero di Jorit
Salerno (SA)
Along the wall of a car park in via Vinciprova, Jorit devotes an immense face to Trotula de Ruggiero, the woman doctor of the Scuola Salernitana who treated women a thousand years ago.
History & archaeologyMuseo Archeologico Provinciale
Salerno (SA)
Fished up from the nets in the gulf in 1930, the bronze head of Apollo watches over the halls: the emblem of a museum that gathers the archaeology of the Salerno area.
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.