Welcome to the site Napoliforme

A place of memory, it is a crossroads of myth, history, poetry and nature. Vergigliano houses the 'Sepulchre of Virgil', the great Mantuan poet who loved the city, and was restored and inaugurated (1930) for the Virgilian bimillennium. From the entrance, bordered by oleanders, a tree-lined path crosses the entire park, climbing along the tufa ridge to a clearing with a panoramic view of the gulf, among holm oaks, pines and locust trees.The Virgilian mausoleum is a Roman columbarium from the Augustan age, consisting of a cylindrical drum with a barrel-shaped roof on a square base; the interior has ten niches along the walls and is illuminated to suggestive effect by small openings in the vault. To the right of the tomb is the entrance to the Crypta neapolitana, a 705-metre-long tunnel that connected Naples to Pozzuoli. Built in the Augustan age by the architect Lucius Cocceio Aucto, in the Chronicle of Partenope (mid-14th century) it is attributed to Virgil himself, who in popular belief became a magician, protector of the city. Mystery cults dedicated to Mithras were secretly practised in the gallery; then the Christian era consecrated the space to Santa Maria dell'Idra, and the Madonna dell'Idra fresco in the niche to the left of the entrance remains from the mediaeval chapel.To amplify the 'romantic' charm, in 1939 a marble stele was placed to house the remains of Giacomo Leopardi, another famous poet conquered by Naples.