Un giardino-scientifico 'scientifico': il caso del Real Museo Meteorologico del Vesuvio

The Royal Meteorological Observatory with adjoining garden was built by Gaetano Fazzini on the Hermitage of the Savior in full neoclassical climate after the Bourbon restoration, a place of first welcome for visitors on the slopes of Vesuvius. The Royal Academy of Sciences here started the construction of the Observatory and the adjoining park here in 1841 in a point from which the entire physical-cultural system of the Neapolitan bay is dominated, immersed in the lava context of the current Vesuvius Natural Park where the stratification of eruptive phenomena characterizes the surrounding landscape. The designer favors the roughness of the orography, resorts to specific plantings as emerges from archival documents. Small artifacts persist - such as the hygrometric station and small greenhouses - with instrumental function for recording physical and magnetic phenomena. The building, which now houses a rich museum with historical instruments on the scientific history of volcanic phenomena, is part, together with the garden, of a natural and scientific complex located in a strategic position. Starting from the focus on some conservation issues of a museum that also 'continues' outside, the contribution aims to trace perspectives of an integrated enhancement between the particular nature of the site and its material testimonies inserted in a geo-historical scenario of exceptional value.