Serra Merola (Stufa Temperata), Botanical Garden of Naples

Naples's botanical garden was created by decree on 28 December 1807 under Joseph Bonaparte, but the project goes back to the 1770s, when Ferdinand IV and Giuseppe Beccadelli di Bologna had secured royal funding; the 1799 revolution interrupted it. The garden opened in 1810 or 1811 depending on the source, with Michele Tenore as its first director. The architect Giuliano de Fazio designed the monumental façade and the Stufa Temperata, whose construction began in 1808 and ended around 1820. It was meant to protect citrus trees in the cold season. A Stufa Calda, added beside it in 1818, housed exotic species that needed more warmth.

During the 19th century successive directors renewed the heated houses: Guglielmo Gasparrini (1861-1866), then Vincenzo Cesati (1868-1883), had new greenhouses built. Fridiano Cavara (1906-1929) had the Stufa Temperata restored. The Second World War and the Allied occupation left the site badly degraded: ironwork was removed for military use and buildings served as barracks or car parks.

Under Aldo Merola (1963-1980) a heating system was installed, and the building later took his name. The earthquake of 23 November 1980 caused further damage, repaired under Paolo De Luca with the support of the Soprintendenza.

The Serra Merola is a rectangular volume 48 m long and 11 m wide, neoclassical in spirit, recalling 18th-century orangeries. Its main façade is rhythmed by fluted Doric columns between which open seven arches closed by glazed wooden frames hung on central pivots. The upper part of the façade carries thirty metopes that most probably depict species grown in the garden in the early 19th century.

Its name, stufa temperata, sets it against the neighbouring stufa calda, built in 1818 for more demanding species; a heating system was added only under Aldo Merola, in the late 1960s. The restorations that followed the 1980 earthquake covered both the garden's monumental façade, more than two hundred metres long, and the greenhouse building itself.

The Serra Merola holds potted plants from many families: young baobabs (genus Adansonia), tropical palms and Acokanthera, a poisonous shrub whose sap indigenous peoples once applied to arrow tips. These collections grew over two centuries thanks to expeditions by Neapolitan botanists.

Other glasshouses in the garden complete the visit: the Califano greenhouses, a large modern group of 5,000 m² built in the late 1960s with support from the CNR, and the tropical greenhouse built under Paolo De Luca, which recreates the Atlantic coast of Mexico with mangroves such as Rhizophora mangle, Avicennia nitida and Laguncularia racemosa. The garden as a whole counts about 25,000 specimens of nearly 10,000 species.

The garden opens at Via Foria 223, against the Albergo dei Poveri, the vast Bourbon-era hospice. The Serra Merola hosts scientific and cultural exhibitions in summer and serves as a teaching aid for natural-science students. Allow two hours to link it with the tropical greenhouse, the Califano houses and the paleobotany and ethnobotany museums installed in the garden's castle. The outing can be extended to the church of Sant'Antonio Abate or the Capodimonte observatory, both nearby.