Description
The Capodimonte Park, or Real Bosco, is Naples' great green lung: 124 hectares of woods, avenues and gardens on the hill around the palace that houses the Capodimonte museum, with views over the gulf and Vesuvius.
Born as a Bourbon hunting reserve, today it is a public park where you can stroll in the shade of more than four hundred varieties of centuries-old trees: oaks, holm oaks, elms, lindens and chestnuts, among old royal buildings, vegetable gardens and viewpoints.
In front of the palace lies the Spianato, lawn gardens dotted with palms planted from the late nineteenth century. The woods proper begin at the Porta di Mezzo, with its elegant rococo wrought-iron gate, completed in 1736.
Beyond the gate opens an elliptical esplanade from which five great avenues fan out. The central one runs between holm oaks pruned to form a green gallery. Along the avenues a few statues survive, like the Giant, made from fragments of ancient marble.
In the woods the buildings of a small court world appear: the Royal Porcelain Factory, the church of San Gennaro, built by Charles of Bourbon for those who lived in the park, the neo-Gothic Capuchin hermitage and the Queen's Casino.
At the end of the middle avenue is the Torre garden, the old orchard with citrus and fruit trees; in the restored vegetable garden grow San Marzano tomatoes and Neapolitan papaccelle peppers.
It all began with a passion: hunting. From 1735 the hill was the reserve of Charles of Bourbon, stocked with Bohemian pheasants, hares, rabbits and deer. The park was designed between 1742 and 1743 by Ferdinando Sanfelice, together with the palace then under construction.
For Neapolitans it long remained a forbidden place. After the French decade, Ferdinand I opened it to the people only twice a year, on religious feast days, so they could reach the hermitage.
Between 1836 and 1837 the botanist Friedrich Dehnhardt brought in the English-style garden, planted rare and exotic trees such as the eucalyptus, and opened up the view of Vesuvius and the gulf from the viewpoints.
Born as a Bourbon hunting reserve, today it is a public park where you can stroll in the shade of more than four hundred varieties of centuries-old trees: oaks, holm oaks, elms, lindens and chestnuts, among old royal buildings, vegetable gardens and viewpoints.
In front of the palace lies the Spianato, lawn gardens dotted with palms planted from the late nineteenth century. The woods proper begin at the Porta di Mezzo, with its elegant rococo wrought-iron gate, completed in 1736.
Beyond the gate opens an elliptical esplanade from which five great avenues fan out. The central one runs between holm oaks pruned to form a green gallery. Along the avenues a few statues survive, like the Giant, made from fragments of ancient marble.
In the woods the buildings of a small court world appear: the Royal Porcelain Factory, the church of San Gennaro, built by Charles of Bourbon for those who lived in the park, the neo-Gothic Capuchin hermitage and the Queen's Casino.
At the end of the middle avenue is the Torre garden, the old orchard with citrus and fruit trees; in the restored vegetable garden grow San Marzano tomatoes and Neapolitan papaccelle peppers.
It all began with a passion: hunting. From 1735 the hill was the reserve of Charles of Bourbon, stocked with Bohemian pheasants, hares, rabbits and deer. The park was designed between 1742 and 1743 by Ferdinando Sanfelice, together with the palace then under construction.
For Neapolitans it long remained a forbidden place. After the French decade, Ferdinand I opened it to the people only twice a year, on religious feast days, so they could reach the hermitage.
Between 1836 and 1837 the botanist Friedrich Dehnhardt brought in the English-style garden, planted rare and exotic trees such as the eucalyptus, and opened up the view of Vesuvius and the gulf from the viewpoints.