A garden inspired by rigorous scientific parameters, but that could be enjoyable for the visitors as well. It was with these criteria that the project of the Royal Botanical Garden was created, when, in 1807, king Joseph Bonaparte decided to launch the work, already imagined by Ferdinand IV.
Using a green area of twelve hectares in the heart of the city, precisely near the Royal Hospice for the Poor (Real Albergo dei Poveri), which previously belonged to religious orders. The project had two fathers: the architect Giuliano De Fazio, who signed the imposing facade, the internal layouts, including the wide avenue that leads to the Castle built in the 16th century by Venetian merchants, and some fundamental buildings such as the Temperate Heater, and the architect Gaspare Maria Paoletti, who took care of the part on via Forio.
It was also De Fazio who created the monumental greenhouse of 48 meters long and 11 meters wide, in neoclassical style, with semi columns, with fluted Doric semi-columns supporting the entablature adorned with metopes and triglyphs representing the main botanical essences present in the garden. A building of considerable architectonic value also due the characteristics of the internal pavilion, like the lowered vault with Doric half-columns forming a whole with the square section pillars incroporated in the rectangular base.
The first director, Michele Tenore, took care of the preparation of the garden since 1810, according to rigorous scientific criteria aimed at the research activities typical of a botanical garden. He was also the first botanist of the kingdom, who collaborated with Federico Denhardt, destined to succeed him, who, at that time, still hold the head gardener role. In compliance with the fundamental canons of an English garden, with the aim to make it more enjoyable for the visitors who started to arrive with the opening to the public in 1811, Tenore cultivated the most varied species of, including many of tropical origin, obtained from the collaboration with the mail European botanical gardens. The precious collections were planted following taxonomic, ecological and ethnobotanical criteria still valid today. And at the end of his management, continued for fifty years, in 1860 the Royal Botanical Garden of Naples counted almost nine thousand species of plants, pretty much like today.
Later, in the history of the Garden, difficult periods alternated with moment of strong relaunch. As in the early Twentieth century, when the Experimental Statin for Medicinal Plants was established and the collection was considerably increased. However, the years of the Second World War were devastating: the Garden was bombed, partly used by the military and occupied by the displaced and many plants were destroyed to leave the space for subsistence crops, Therefore, after the war, a reconstruction work was necessary, culminated in the 60s in the expansion and qualification of crops.
The original garden has been kept intact and the historic edifices have been preserved. In the actual botanical Garden, rich of about twenty-five thousand plants, we can distinguish three macro-areas, arranged according to as many criteria: systematic, with the area of the conifers, the fernery for the ferns, the palm grove, the citrus grove and the area for the angiosperm; ecological, with the desert for the succulents, the beach with essences typical of the Italian sandy shores, the peat bog for the Cyperaceae, the rockery with species typical of the Apennines, the Mediterranean scrub, the tanks for the aquatic plants and the tropical greenhouse with the reproduction of a mangrove; ethnobotanical with the historic experimental section of the medicinal plants. There are numerous greenhouses, including the Merola one, named after of one of the most active directors, which corresponds to the ancient Temperate Heater. The Botanical garden its a structure of the Federico II University, Faculty of Mathematical, Physical and and Natural sciences.
Information:
Open Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free admission.
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