Description
The Botanical Garden of Naples, also called the Real Orto botanico, is a scientific garden of the Federico II University covering about 12 hectares, on Via Foria, in the center of the city. It holds about 9,000 plant species and almost 25,000 specimens: a great green oasis a stone's throw from the Real Albergo dei Poveri.
The monumental facade, over two hundred meters long, is the work of Giuliano de Fazio, and a perpendicular avenue leads all the way to the Castle. The lowest part of the garden was designed by Gaspare Maria Paoletti.
The plants are arranged in different ways. By species: Pinophyta, the fern house, the palm grove, the citrus grove. By habitat: the desert with succulents, the beach, the peat bog, the Mediterranean scrub.
A tropical greenhouse recreates a mangrove, inspired by the old heated greenhouse, now disused. There are also a space designed for the blind, an area of biblical plants and a chromo-sensory garden.
The Stufa temperata, neoclassical like the eighteenth-century orangeries, protected the citrus trees in winter. The Castle, a sixteenth-to-seventeenth-century building, now houses the museum of paleobotany and ethnobotany.
It was founded on December 28, 1807, by a decree of Joseph Bonaparte, during the French decade. The project was, however, the Bourbons': Ferdinand IV had endorsed it in 1776, but the revolution of 1799 had halted it.
The garden opened in 1811 and its first director, Michele Tenore, led it until 1860: fifty years in which he brought the cultivated species to about nine thousand. Here they studied plants useful to health, agriculture and industry.
The garden also worked for the kings: it took part in designing the Bourbon Royal Sites and spread exotic plants, acclimatized in the hothouses. The gardens of the Floridiana, too, were laid out by its director.
During the Second World War part of the garden was turned into a football pitch, where Napoli played. Other flower beds became war vegetable gardens, and some spaces were used by the military. The 1980 earthquake hit it hard.
The monumental facade, over two hundred meters long, is the work of Giuliano de Fazio, and a perpendicular avenue leads all the way to the Castle. The lowest part of the garden was designed by Gaspare Maria Paoletti.
The plants are arranged in different ways. By species: Pinophyta, the fern house, the palm grove, the citrus grove. By habitat: the desert with succulents, the beach, the peat bog, the Mediterranean scrub.
A tropical greenhouse recreates a mangrove, inspired by the old heated greenhouse, now disused. There are also a space designed for the blind, an area of biblical plants and a chromo-sensory garden.
The Stufa temperata, neoclassical like the eighteenth-century orangeries, protected the citrus trees in winter. The Castle, a sixteenth-to-seventeenth-century building, now houses the museum of paleobotany and ethnobotany.
It was founded on December 28, 1807, by a decree of Joseph Bonaparte, during the French decade. The project was, however, the Bourbons': Ferdinand IV had endorsed it in 1776, but the revolution of 1799 had halted it.
The garden opened in 1811 and its first director, Michele Tenore, led it until 1860: fifty years in which he brought the cultivated species to about nine thousand. Here they studied plants useful to health, agriculture and industry.
The garden also worked for the kings: it took part in designing the Bourbon Royal Sites and spread exotic plants, acclimatized in the hothouses. The gardens of the Floridiana, too, were laid out by its director.
During the Second World War part of the garden was turned into a football pitch, where Napoli played. Other flower beds became war vegetable gardens, and some spaces were used by the military. The 1980 earthquake hit it hard.