Giardino della Minerva
Salerno
KnownNature
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
€
Hours and prices
Free entry.
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.
MuseumsMuseo 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.
- 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.
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.