Tempio di Atena
Massa Lubrense
KnownNature
The story
Near the tower survive the traces of the sanctuary of Athena that legend says was founded by Ulysses, where the Greeks worshipped the goddess sheer above the sea.
Access
trail
Hours and prices
Free entry.
More gems in Massa Lubrense
NaturePunta Campanella
Massa Lubrense
The furthest tip of the Sorrento peninsula, a wind-beaten marine reserve between the two gulfs, with its watchtower and Capri an arm of sea away.
◆ Free beachesFiordo
Massa Lubrense
A cleft in the rock where the sea slips in, narrow and green, almost always shaded beneath high walls: you don't come here for the sun, but for the silence.
- Sacred art
Belvedere del Deserto — Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi
Massa Lubrense
From the old Carmelite convent the gaze takes in both gulfs at a single turn, Naples and Salerno, high above Sant'Agata.
- ◆ Free beaches
Cala di Mitigliano e grotta
Massa Lubrense
A path through olive trees drops down to the rocks, Capri looks an arm's length away, and the cave opens in the water like a hall of shadow and salt.
- ◆ Free beaches
Marina di Crapolla
Massa Lubrense
Seven hundred steps down from Torca lead to a tiny landing place, where the chapel of San Pietro rests on Benedictine ruins and fishermen carve boat shelters out of Roman columns.
- Hiking
Anello di Punta Campanella
Massa Lubrense (NA)
At the tip of the Sorrento peninsula the trail reaches Punta Campanella, where a watchtower gazes at Capri opposite, across a narrow, blue arm of sea.
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.