Park of the Tombs of Virgil and Leopardi

Here, the city’s story meets poetry: on one side Virgil, deeply connected to the Neapolitan imagination; on the other Giacomo Leopardi, who spent the final years of his life in Naples.

The park is located in Salita della Grotta, in the Piedigrotta-Mergellina area, on the eastern slopes of the Posillipo hill. The Italian Ministry of Culture describes it as a small garden behind the Church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta, near Mergellina railway station, in an area connected to the Greek name Pausilypon, meaning “pause from pain”.
Its position is highly symbolic: this is a threshold between the compact city and western Naples, between the sea of Mergellina, the hill of Posillipo and the route leading towards Fuorigrotta, Bagnoli and the Phlegraean Fields.

The site owes much of its fame to the Roman tomb traditionally attributed to Publius Vergilius Maro, the poet of the Aeneid. According to the Ministry of Culture, the name of the park comes from the attribution of the Roman mausoleum in the area to Virgil, an interpretation officially reaffirmed when the park was inaugurated in 1930 after restoration and consolidation works.
The monument is a Roman mausoleum in opus reticulatum, with a cylindrical drum on a quadrangular base and an internal square burial chamber. Over the centuries, Neapolitan tradition has deeply associated Virgil with Naples, transforming him not only into a poet, but also into a legendary protector of the city.
This balance between history, literary memory and legend is what makes the place so fascinating.

The park also contains the monument dedicated to Giacomo Leopardi, who died in Naples in 1837. According to the Ministry of Culture, since 1939 the monument has housed the presumed remains of the poet, transferred here from the former Church of San Vitale in Fuorigrotta, now disappeared.
Leopardi’s presence makes the park unique: two poets, distant in time, meet in the same place, united by Naples and by the city’s ability to preserve different layers of memory.

Next to the tombs, the park also preserves the eastern entrance to the Crypta Neapolitana, also known as the old cave of Pozzuoli. This Augustan-age tunnel was carved into the tuff rock to connect Naples with the Phlegraean Fields. The Ministry of Culture describes it as one of the oldest tunnels in the world, 705 metres long, with two oblique light shafts for illumination and ventilation.
The Crypta reinforces the value of the area as a place of passage: not only a literary site, but also an ancient infrastructure linking Naples with its western territory.

ADDRESS: Salita della Grotta, 20 – Napoli
PHONE NUMBER: +39 081669390
WEB: https://cultura.gov.it/luogo/Parco%20e%20Tomba%20di%20Virgilio
MAIL: drm-cam.tombadivirgilio@cultura.gov.itdrm-cam@pec.cultura.gov.it