Oasi WWF Bosco di San Silvestro
Caserta (CE)
Hidden gemNature & hiking
The story
A former Bourbon hunting reserve behind the Reggia, today a protected wood where holm oaks and oaks climb two hills and silence has replaced the royal hunts.
More gems in Caserta
History & archaeologyReggia di Caserta
Caserta
Vanvitelli's grand staircase, then three kilometres of garden climbing all the way to the waterfall, among fountains and mythological statues designed to astonish the Bourbons.
- History & archaeology
Belvedere di San Leucio
Caserta
Ferdinando IV's silken utopia: a factory-village where silk was woven for the courts of Europe, with the looms and the workers' houses gathered around the belvedere.
- History & archaeology
Reggia di Caserta — Collezione Terrae Motus
Caserta (CE)
In the halls of the Reggia di Caserta the Terrae Motus collection brings together the art born from the shock of the 1980 earthquake, from Warhol to Beuys, willed by the gallerist Lucio Amelio.
VillagesCasertavecchia
Caserta (CE)
On the ridge of the Tifatini mountains, this intact medieval borgo (old village) hugs the Norman cathedral with its Arab-Sicilian geometries, stone alleys and the cool air rising from the plain of Caserta.
CastlesCastello di Casertavecchia
Caserta (CE)
In the medieval borgo (old village) of Casertavecchia stand the ruins of the castle and its cylindrical tower, overlooking the plain of Terra di Lavoro.
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.