Giardino botanico (Chianu d'a Batteria)

Above Soverato, along the road now called the Panoramica, a botanical garden of Mediterranean species hides an unexpected military graph: four levelled gun platforms cut into the green, the "Chianu d'a Batteria" that gave the whole stretch its dialect name. Garden and battery together make this one of the town's most distinctive walks.

Why it matters

The garden preserves Mediterranean maquis and tree species typical of the southern Ionian coast, contributing to Soverato's nickname, "città del Giardino". Four artillery platforms from the Second World War remain among the trees. Local accounts associate them with engagements against a surfaced Allied submarine and an aircraft brought down on 7 September 1943, although the reported actions are not confirmed by Allied military archives. Few Italian seaside resorts keep their wartime coastal batteries inside a botanical garden open for weddings and concerts.

What to notice

The garden has two distinct features. Its botanical character comes from the maquis species of the southern Ionian — the plants that smell of resin and salt after rain — arranged in a loose, naturalistic layout rather than a flowerbed garden, with the gulf appearing between the branches. The second is military: the four levelled platforms, recognisable as flat paved squares among the green, aligned towards the sea approaches they once covered. Local historians add precise memories — the spring 1943 action against a British submarine that had surfaced with intent, the downing of an aircraft on 7 September 1943 — while cautioning that Allied military archives never confirmed the claims. At the garden's edge stands the old watchtower renamed of Charles V , so a single visit covers the coast's entire defensive arc from corsair raids to the last war.

Context and history

Before it was the Panoramica, the road above town was known by its battery: "u Chianu d'a Batteria", the flat ground of the battery, a name preserved in dialect and now attached to the garden itself. The installation belonged to the coastal anti-ship and anti-aircraft organisation that Italy dispersed along its shores in the Second World War; local accounts place here the guns of the MILMART maritime militia under the coastal division, and attribute to them the 1943 engagements, though the same accounts admit the documentary record is thin. After the war the platforms remained, quietly absorbed into a garden. The Comune curated the site as a botanical space of Mediterranean species, hosts cultural events and weddings among the gun squares, and made it a stop of the tourist Ippobus in the years when that service ran — the origin, the municipal narrative suggests, of Soverato's proud self-description as the garden city.