What to See in Portici: Attractions & Sights

More places of interest

Parco Reggia di Portici

The Royal Palace of Portici, or Reggia di Portici, is a monumental palace built in 1738 at the wish of Charles of Bourbon, king of Naples, and his wife Maria Amalia of Saxony. Behind it the park stretched between the slopes of Vesuvius and the sea, in two parts: the Upper Wood, meant for hunting and the royal family's outdoor activities, and the Lower Wood, with gardens, avenues and areas for leisure.
What to see
The Upper Wood, also called the Bosco di sopra and today the Parco Gussone, covers about thirty-six hectares and in Bourbon times was the royal family's hunting reserve. It is named after the botanist Giovanni Gussone, superintendent of the royal parks, who saw to its layout and promoted reforestation with various species, in particular the holm oak, also used to line the avenues; in the wood are the Wall for the ball game and the so-called Castle, used by Ferdinand IV for military exercises, as well as the Botanical Garden, founded in 1872 on the Palace's existing gardens. The Lower Wood, towards the sea, was laid out as a garden, first on the French model, with regular geometric forms, then on the English one; it had broad avenues, fountains such as the Fountain of the Sirens and the Fountain of the Swans, the Kiosk of King Charles and an amphitheatre, and reached the Royal Fishponds near Villa d'Elboeuf. A zoo was also set up there, with exotic animals brought from abroad. The Prateria, one of the main spaces of the lower sector, was also built with a defensive function, against possible attacks from the sea; today it comprises a large expanse of lawn and a citrus grove.
The palace, square in plan, is arranged around a large octagonal courtyard crossed by today's via Università, once the strada delle Calabrie; the main facade looks onto the Gulf of Naples. Architects such as Giovanni Antonio Medrano, Antonio Canevari and Luigi Vanvitelli worked on it, and painters such as Giuseppe Bonito. To the left of the courtyard are the barracks of the Royal Guards and the Palatine Chapel, where in May 1770 the young Mozart attended mass; a majestic staircase leads to the first floor, where the apartment of Caroline Bonaparte is. Among the rooms mentioned are the Throne Room and the Gilded Room. The digs for the foundations brought to light many ancient works of art, among them a temple with twenty-four marble columns, and the palace housed the Herculanense Museum, with the finds from Herculaneum. The Royal Riding Hall, made from the Mascabruno palace to a design by Medrano, was inspired by the Viennese one and keeps a characteristic wooden roof. Since 1935 the Palace has been the seat of the Faculty of Agriculture of the Federico II University of Naples.
Visiting
The Palace is on via Università, in Portici, and houses the Faculty of Agriculture, the Museums of the Reggia and the Botanical Garden. According to the sources the indoor part of the museums opened to visitors on 12 April 2025: hours and visiting arrangements should be checked.
Our editors' tip
In the Botanical Garden, which covers about 7400 m², the perimeter walls, the marble busts, the fountains and the Pedicino Greenhouse, built in 1877 of iron and glass, survive; there is also a collection of sculptural finds considered the last remnant on the spot of the Herculaneum Museum.
Museo Nazionale Ferroviario di Pietrarsa

The National Railway Museum of Pietrarsa is a thematic museum run by the FS Italiane Foundation, between the Naples district of San Giovanni a Teduccio and the comuni of Portici and San Giorgio a Cremano. It is housed in the former Pietrarsa Works, between the Pietrarsa-San Giorgio a Cremano railway station and the sea.
What to see
The museum consists of seven pavilions with a total area of about thirty-six thousand square metres, fourteen thousand of them covered, and holds steam locomotives, three-phase and direct-current electric locomotives, diesel locomotives, electric railcars, railcars and passenger carriages. The first pavilion keeps the vehicles of the past, beginning with the historical reconstruction of the first train of the Naples-Portici line, with the steam locomotives and the three-phase electric ones; the second gathers a wide selection of reduced-scale rolling stock and wagons, models and everyday railway objects. The third is divided into three sectors, with the old machinery of the former works, a naval sector with models and various objects and the locomotives of the «recent past», including diesel and electric railcars. The Royal Train is interesting, a convoy of eleven carriages built in 1929 for the wedding of Umberto II of Savoy and Maria José of Belgium; a presidential carriage offered in 1989 by Francesco Cossiga was also recently acquired. Among the famous locomotives are the steam classes 290, 835 and 480 and the direct-current electric E.326 and E.626. The museum also holds fine and applied art: the imposing statue of Ferdinand II of Bourbon, cast in iron in the works themselves, and the Art Nouveau Royal Hall, with a gold-leaf ceiling and a table of exotic mahogany.
The museum stands where the Royal Bourbon Works of Pietrarsa once were, conceived by Ferdinand II of Bourbon in 1840 as a steel industry and from 1845 as a steam locomotive factory; work began with the on-site assembly of seven locomotives, with parts built in England. Among the illustrious visitors was Tsar Nicholas I, who wanted to take Pietrarsa as a model for the Kronstadt railway complex. After Italian unification the works went through a difficult phase; job cuts led to strikes and serious disorder, and on 6 August 1863 a charge by bersaglieri against the demonstrators caused seven deaths and twenty serious injuries. With the advent of electric and then diesel traction a slow decline began, culminating on 15 November 1975 in the closure decree and the decision to make Pietrarsa a railway museum. The inauguration took place on 7 October 1989, on the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Italian railways; after a long period of renovation the museum reopened on 19 December 2007.
Visiting
The museum is by the sea, near the Pietrarsa-San Giorgio a Cremano station. The sources consulted give no opening hours or fees: check them.
Our editors' tip
The Bayard locomotive on show is a reproduction of 1939, built to recall the inaugural train of the Naples-Portici railway, of 1839: it was chosen because it was the only one for which drawings survived, even though the engine at the inauguration was the Vesuvio.