Mefite della Valle d'Ansanto
Rocca San Felice (AV)
Hidden gemNature
The story
In inland Irpinia a sulphurous pool bubbles with toxic fumes: the ancients worshipped the goddess Mefite here and imagined a mouth of the underworld, among yellow vapours and barren earth.
Hours and prices
Free entry.
More gems in Rocca San Felice
◆ VillagesRocca San Felice borgo
Rocca San Felice (AV)
Beneath the ruins of the medieval castle the borgo (old village) huddles in stone and steep alleys, not far from the fumes of the Mefite: here legend borders on sulphur.
- ◆ Villages
Rocca San Felice
Rocca San Felice (AV)
Rocca San Felice gathers its houses around a ruined castle, not far from the Mefite, the sulphurous pool the ancients believed to be a threshold of the underworld.
- Nature
Mefite d'Ansanto
Rocca San Felice
A small lake boiling with gas and sulphur in a lifeless hollow: the ancients worshipped the goddess Mefite here, and Virgil imagined a gateway to the underworld.
More gems: Nature
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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
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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
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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
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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.