Between broom and cypresses in the garden of Virgil and Leopardi

Behind the Mergellina railway station, the city's Art Nouveau jewel, between Chiaia and Piedigrotta, poetry lovers can find themselves next to Publius Virgil Marone, author of the Aeneid, and Giacomo Leopardi, singer of the Infinite. Their respective mausoleums are located inside a tuffaceous 'bell': that of the Mantuan poet is a kind of chapel in opus reticulatum, dating back to the first decades of the imperial age, in whose niches Virgil's remains were probably buried. Since 1939, Leopardi, whose remains were moved there from the church of San Vitale in Fuorigrotta, has kept him company. In addition to reading the verses on the epigraphs, in this spectacular park you can also recognise the eastern entrance to the so-called Crypta Neapolitana, the tunnel dug into the rock in the Augustan age to connect Naples with the Phlegraean Fields, and a section of the aqueduct, also from the Augustan age. From Pliny the Younger onwards, many men of letters came to pay homage to Virgil and to enjoy the flowering bushes, the brooms soon to bloom and all the other fragrant botanical species.