Description
Each stage of this rich and fascinating itinerary accompanies the visitor to the discovery of the multifaceted soul of Campania, from the primeval archaism attested in the Campi Flegrei to the majesty of Magna Graecia, up to the most recent nineteenth-century legacies. A journey that affirms the importance that this small southern region of a small peninsular state was able to build and earn in the European socio-political panorama, to the point that it was considered as one of the most prosperous and innovative kingdoms in all of Europe.
The stages
The itinerary includes a visit to actual cornerstones of the history of Campania, from the Archaeological Museum of the Campi Flegrei in Bacoli to the Royal Palace of Naples, from the Real Sito in Carditello in San Tammaro to the Certosa di San Lorenzo in Padula. Interspersed between these stop-overs, there are other unmissable jewels of Campania's artistic-cultural heritage, such as the Tomb of Virgil in Posillipo, Villa Pignatelli in Naples, the Amphitheater Campano and the Mitreo di Santa Maria Capua Vetere, as well as other very important Archaeological Museums, each dedicated to a specific phase of the human experience in Campania: from the Antiche Capua and Calatia, passing through Nola, Pontecagnano and the Sarno and Sele Valleys.
Visit to the Archaeological Museum of the Campi Flegrei
Duration: 1 hour
The Archaeological Museum of the Campi Flegrei offers and protects an unparalleled heritage, an immense cultural capital that tells of the era in which Baia established itself in Roman society as a privileged place of idleness and rest for the patricians, who built numerous splendid villas in this area. Of particular interest, within the museum itinerary, is the Nymphaeum reconstruction, originally wanted by Emperor Claudius and today sunk to a depth of 7 metres below sea level due to bradyseism (a geological phenomenon).
Show moreVisit to the Park and Tomb of Virgil
Duration: 1 hour
Nestled in the heart of Posillipo, the Neapolitan "buen retiro" which has always been the enemy of sorrow and pain, the Vergiliano Park in Piedigrotta continues today, after hundreds of years, to represent an essential place of pilgrimage, inspiration and contemplation for thousands of visitors ready to immerse themselves in its immortal history.
Show moreVisit to Villa Pignatelli
Duration: 1 hour
One of the main symbols of Naples that was recognised as one of the main political and cultural capitals of all of Europe, Villa Pignatelli today preserves a legacy of inestimable value in terms of decorative art. A legacy that the Pignatelli family wanted to donate to the city of Naples, and which today can be admired in all its splendour.
Show moreVisit to the Palazzo Reale (Royal Palace)
Duration: 1 hour
The Royal Palace of Naples can be considered as one of the most important places in the history of Southern Italy. A symbol of political power in Naples for hundreds of years, the palace today occupies a very important civic role: that of a historical memory of a city and its people.
Show moreVisit to the Archaeological Museum of Agro Atellano
Duration: 1 hour
The Archaeological Museum of Agro Atellano deals with illustrating the history of the southern part of the Ager Campanus, or rather of Ancient Campania, a territory that extended from the slopes of Mount Massico to the north up to lapping the Campi Flegrei and the Vesuvian area in the south. Immediately identified as a luxuriant and prosperous territory, this "happy" area became the epicentre of one of the most important cultural and commercial centres of the Roman period.
Show moreVisit to the Royal Site of Carditello
Duration: 1 hour
Historically belonging to the Bourbons of the Two Sicilies, the Carditello estate was the seat of a dynamic farm, renowned for breeding fine equine breeds, as well as for producing and marketing agricultural and dairy products. Carditello, a true jewel of the Terra di Lavoro, so much so that it earned the title of "Royal Delight", offered, alongside its agricultural activity, a pleasant stay for the royal family, especially with regard to sport hunting, particularly favoured thanks to the extension of the woods surrounding the estate.
Show moreVisit to the Campania Amphitheatre, the Mithraeum and the Archaeological Museum of Ancient Capua
Duration: 2 hours
Originally built as a fortress, the Torre di Sant'Erasmo (Sant'Erasmo Tower) in the municipality of Santa Maria Capua Vetere became a royal residence, an archive, a stable and even a horse breeding institute over the centuries before being turned into a museum housing the legacy of one of the most important and prosperous cities of the ancient world. The Campania Amphitheatre and the Mithraeum of Santa Maria Capua Vetere fully represent the importance that the city of Capua was able to carve out in the complex socio-political panorama of the ancient world: if the former was second in size only to the Colosseum in Rome, for which it was probably taken as a model; the second was instead one of the most important places of Mithraism.
Show moreVisit to the Archaeological Museum of Ancient Calatia
Duration: 1 hour
The town of Calatia, built along what in ancient times was known as the "Queen of Roads", the Appian Way, was an Etruscan city that gained considerable political and strategic importance, particularly during the second Roman-Samnite war, fought between 326 BC and 304 BC. Today, the legacy of this ancient and proud city lives on in the Archaeological Museum that is entirely dedicated to it, housed in the Casino ducale dei "Carafa della Stadera", (The Casino ducale of the "Carafa della Stadera) a strengthened farmhouse from the 16th century that was one of the main residences of this important family in the city of Maddaloni.
Show moreVisit to the Archaeological Historical Museum of Nola
Duration: 1 hour
Inhabited since the Bronze Age, the area of Nola became, in 801 BC, and therefore 48 years before Rome, the seat of a "new city" thanks to the Ausoni. Over the centuries, the Roman people intertwined relationships, initially of rivalry and then friendship, with Rome, until they obtained, thanks to the Emperor Octavian Augustus, the status of "Nolana Colonia Felix Augusta" with senatorial dignity. The history of the territory of Nola, from the prehistoric age to the eighteenth century, is told in this museum located inside a former medieval convent complex of the Lateran Canonichesses.
Show moreVisit to the Archaeological Museum of the Sarno Valley
Duration: 1 hour
The Archaeological Museum of the Sarno Valley, housed within the eighteenth-century Palazzo Capua, exhibits a vast archaeological heritage from the excavations carried out in the Sarno Valley, ranging from the prehistoric age to the Middle Ages. These are testimonies of great interest, especially with regard to the funerary objects brought to light from the thousands of necropolises scattered throughout the territory, all belonging to the so-called "Fossa Tombs culture", which spread in the first half of the first millennium B.C. in southern Thyrrhenian Italy and partly in central Italy.
Show moreVisit to the Archaeological Museum of Pontecagnano
Duration: 1 hour
Entirely dedicated to the history of the "frontier Etruscans", the Archaeological Museum of Pontecagnano is characterized as a meeting place between "people, religions, and languages, mentalities, and cultures". Its exceptional exhibition houses material unearthed from the excavations of an ancient Villanovan settlement, the ancient Etruscan settlement of Picentia, as well as funerary items of roughly 9,000 tombs from the necropolis discovered in the area, dating back from 3000 B.C. to the third century B.C.
Show moreVisit to the Archaeological Museum of the Media Valle del Sele
Duration: 1 hour
Inhabited since prehistoric times, the territory of Eboli became, thanks to the flourishing commercial relations between the Etruscan populations in the north and the Greek populations in the south, an important centre of reference for the Lucan tribes of the hinterland, as evidenced by the numerous necropolises scattered along the perimeter of the city's historic centre. Confirming its importance in Roman times, ancient Eboli was given the legal status of "Municipium", that is, a community which, despite being linked to Rome, maintained the right to govern itself with its own laws. The history of "Eburum" as an ancient "outpost of civilization" is now reconstructed in its archaeological museum, located in the monumental complex of San Francesco, built in the thirteenth century and remodeled in the sixteenth century.
Show moreVisit to the Certosa di San Lorenzo (San Lorenzo Charterhouse)
Duration: 1 hour
The Carthusian Order founded the first monastic complex in Campania, before the Carthusian monasteries of San Martino in Naples and San Giacomo on Capri. The Certosa di San Lorenzo (San Lorenzi Charterhouse) in Padula can also claim the title of the largest and most opulent monastery in Italy, mainly thanks to the regal magnificence of its Baroque forms. And even at a European level, the Certosa di Padula is considered, thanks to its vastness and lavishness, as one of the main structures of its kind.
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