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These two items appeared separately in the Around Naples Encyclopedia on the dates indicated and have been consolidated onto a single page here. entry June 2003
The Villa was the result of the wishes of King Ferdinand IV, who, in 1788, decided he wanted a large wooded area along the sea for members of the royal family to stroll in. The park, thus, was open to the public only one day a year, for the Festival of Piedigrotta. They say that many marriage contracts of the day even stipulated the husband's duty to take his wife to the gardens on that day each year. The park was opened to the general public on a permanent basis in 1869 after the unification of Italy. The seaside road, via Caracciolo, which now lies between the aquarium and the sea, is another, more recent reclamation project added to the topography of the city. Until 1900, the sea rolled up to the villa, itself, and coach traffic passed along the Riviera di Chiaia, the road now bounding the inner side of the park. The Villa Comunale houses the Anton Dohrn Aquarium (photo, above). In 1870 Anton Dohrn (1840-1909), German zoologist and disciple of Darwin, requested and got permission to build a “Zoological Station”—an aquarium—in Naples. He was given a site within the Villa Comunale; the project was begun in 1872 under Oscar Capocci and finished by the German architect Adolf von Hildebrand. Interesting artwork within the Florentine Renaissance building include murals by the German artist Hans von Mareès, who drew inspiration from characteristic fishing scenes of the Mediterranean, especially Naples and Sorrento. Since its inception, the aquarium in Naples has not only served as an exhibition of marine flora and fauna, but has also been a working research facility in marine biology. The entire Villa Comunale underwent
remodeling a couple of years ago. There seem to be
fewer trees than before. Some call it "pruning back".
Some call it firewood. I haven't made up my mind. [2011 update: The condition of the trees in the Villa
is precarious at the moment due to the presence of the
palm tree pest. See this link.] entry Mar. 2003
aquarium, villa
comunale (2)
Very few Neapolitans would like to see the Villa
Comunale dug up and closed again (as it was a few
years ago for restoration) or see the current aquarium
demolished. It fits in with the general old-fashioned
atmosphere of the park—classical statues, fountains,
gazebo/bandstands, etc.—though that, too, has changed
a bit since the recent overhaul. Not only did they
chop down a lot of trees but they replaced a number of
19th–century metal scrolls and curlicues along the
fence with more modern bulletoid metalwork that has
already midwifed an entire repertoire of suppository
jokes. Update-March 2012: also see Statuary, Monuments and Structures in the Villa Comunale.
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The
Villa Comunale is the most prominent and
visible park in the city of Naples. It stands on
reclaimed land, for, as early prints show, the sea
once came right up to a rather swampy area, the site
mostly of fishermen's houses. It wasn't until the 16th
century, the beginning of the Spanish viceroyship,
that a general campaign was undertaken to make the
land suitable for the construction of the fashionable
villas that sprang up in the 1600s along that section
of the sea front. (
Elia Mannetta,
the engineer from Baltimore who built the new aquarium
in Genoa, will be in Naples in a week or so to help
decide if the city of Naples needs a new aquarium and,
if so, where to put it. There are three candidates:
(1) in San Giovanni a Teduccio, a suburb of Naples
just to the east along the coast; (2) Bagnoli, where a
new aquarium would fit in nicely with the pedagogical
ambitions of the Science City exposition and fair
grounds as well as with a general rejuvenation of the
area after decades of decay; (3) in the Villa
Comunale, where a new aquarium would take the place of
the older one, the Anton Dohrn Aquarium, in place
since the 1870s. Choice number 2, Bagnoli, is probably
the strongest candidate.