The Caserta Planetarium is a museum owned by the Comune, in piazza Ungaretti, in a large peripheral public-housing district between the historic hamlets of Falciano, Centurano and Tredici, towards Maddaloni. It was built in 2008 with funds from the European Union's URBAN II project and inaugurated on 19 December 2008.
What to see
The planetarium has a digital projection dome and a museum route. The dome is a circular hall covered by a hemispherical metal structure of about 7 metres, with a one-direction auditorium of 47 seats, extendable to 51. The projection is entirely digital: two laser projectors, at two points on the perimeter, project images of objects in the sky, animations and simulations of the starry sky, with six sound diffusers and two LED lamps. The «lesson-shows» last about an hour and ten minutes and are created by the educators and the scientific curator on themes such as the solar system, the Earth-Moon relationship, the motions of the Earth, and the birth and life of stars; four are designed for children and young people in a fairy-tale setting, and five deal with the history of science, such as Galileo's discoveries, astronomy in Dante's time and in Vanvitelli's time.
The museum route, inaugurated on 19 January 2019, offers original instruments (a compass, two measuring instruments of about 1880, refracting and reflecting telescopes), copies (armillary spheres, astrolabe, nocturnal, camera obscura), physics books, interactive stations, 84 rocks and minerals, two models of space vehicles and a station for listening to proverbs and sayings in Neapolitan about astronomy. The planetarium also hosts preparation for the Italian Astronomy Olympiads, concerts, book presentations and exhibitions.
Visiting
Since 2012 the planetarium has been run by a temporary association of purpose among three state schools of Caserta, and since 2014 it has been in agreement with the Sistema Museale Terra di Lavoro. Works funded by the PNRR, between October 2023 and December 2024, gave the route devices to improve interaction with audiences, in particular those with reduced sensory abilities and neurodivergent visitors, and updated the projection system. The sources mention an official website, planetariodicaserta.it, but give no hours or prices: check directly.
Our editors' tip
Unlike traditional optical-mechanical planetaria, such as the one in Milan, here the projectors are placed at two points on the perimeter of the hall and the audience sits in the middle. The lesson-shows are devised and developed in house by Luigi Antonio Smaldone and Pietro Di Lorenzo.
