Giardino della Minerva

Terraced against the Bonadies hill between a vanished stream and medieval walls, the Giardino della Minerva preserves the teaching garden of Matteo Silvatico, where physicians of the Scuola Medica Salernitana studied medicinal plants. A seventeenth-century stairway, an artificial grotto and a pergolated belvedere over the port complete this layered garden of healing.

Why it matters

Around the beginning of the fourteenth century, Matteo Silvatico, a master of the Scuola Medica Salernitana, grew and classified medicinal herbs here for students. The garden is associated with the study of medicinal plants and later botanical gardens in Padua, Pisa, Florence, Pavia and Bologna. Silvatico's reference work on the "semplici", single-ingredient plant remedies, was compiled around 1317.

What to notice

The first and largest terrace has regular square beds that repeat the oldest layout found in the soil. An elongated rectangular tank, the peschiera, is framed by four columns and has a balustraded balcony. A second basin features a marble mascaron; a narrow terrace has a small fountain of limestone concretions. The seventeenth-century scalea, an open-air staircase against the ancient walls, is supported by square pillars with plain stucco ornament and ends at a pergolated belvedere above the port and historic centre. An artificial grotto has a vault lined with calcareous concretions. Restoration of neighbouring Palazzo Capasso recovered medieval painted roof tiles. Artemisia absinthium grows among the garden's plants.

Context and history

The slope, known in the Middle Ages as part of the Plaium montis quarter, lay between the Fusandola stream and the city walls, and the Silvatico family held land here from the twelfth century. After centuries of changing ownership and alterations to the terraces and plantings, the last private proprietor, Professor Giovanni Capasso, donated the ensemble after the Second World War. The Comune of Salerno launched the present botanical garden project in 2000. The medieval doctrine of the four humours informed the garden's original purpose: healers associated plants with blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm, and cultivated them for study. Giovanni Boccaccio portrayed Matteo Silvatico as maestro Mazzeo della Montagna in the Decameron. The garden contains more than 300 plant species, arranged by traditional classification on the lowest terrace and by landscape effect elsewhere.