Inside the Museum and Royal Wood of Capodimonte in Naples, Giardino Torre was born as the Royal Fruit Garden of the Bourbons, today returned to its original splendor thanks to a conservative restoration that has reopened to the public the greenhouses, nurseries and even the ancient pizza oven commissioned by Maria Theresa of Austria to taste the “people’s delight”.

On the north-eastern edge of the Royal Wood of Capodimonte, created in the 18th century as a hunting reserve commissioned by King Charles of Bourbon, lays the Royal Fruit Garden with an evocative turreted farmhouse that houses the ancient wood-fired oven – where the legend tells that the first Margherita pizza was cooked – as well as the Flower Garden and the so-called Purpignera used by the Bourbons for the production of fruit and vegetables and the cultivation of rare or exotic plants.

Since their establishment, in fact, the royal sites of the Bourbons – Capodimonte, Persano, Carditello, San Leucio – were intended as productive properties, capable of self-sustaining and generating profit.

Today the Museum and the Park follow the same philosophy desired by its creator, Charles of Bourbon, according to which Aesthetics and the Functionality must unite in a monumental way.

(Nunzia Petrecca, landscape architect)

An example of this philosophy is Giardino Torre, known since the eighteenth century as the French Garden or Biancour Garden, from the name of the family of gardeners who looked after it, which in 2023, after a meticulous conservative restoration, was reopened to the public as a bistro and café, pizzeria, shop, and educational park.

The muse behind the recovery of this Garden of Eden is Nunzia Petrecca, a landscape architect specializing in the protection of historic gardens. Having always been in love with this place, she won with her company Delizie Reali the European tender for the enhancement and management of the “Reale Fruttiera del Bosco di Capodimonte”, aka the ancient agricultural company of the Bourbons.

The botanical garden it is immersed in today is the most beautiful in Europe with over 600 varieties of citrus groves, fruit trees and exotic plants. Among these, just to give a few examples, let’s mention the suggestive Historic Citrus Grove, where in 1816 tangerines were introduced for the first time in Europe, the gigantic Camphor arrived from China in 1825, one of the largest in Italy with a treetop of 450 square meters, and botanical rarities such as pink banana trees, three-petaled magnolias, “Venus slipper” orchids and a rich collection of ancient camellias.

The café, the bistro and the pizzeria present a gastronomic offer that draws inspiration from the place’s roots, with a farm-to-table philosophy, as most of the products used in the kitchen come from the estate and other small artisans in the area.

A true gem of Giardino Torre is its legendary historic oven. It is said that, during a visit of the sovereigns to Capodimonte, Queen Maria Carolina, wife of Ferdinand of Bourbon, had expressed the desire to taste pizza for the first time, as the local people so loved it. So, an oven was set up where the famous ‘pizza di due grana’ was prepared for the sovereign.

Today this oven is used only on special and celebratory occasions, but in the new wood-fired oven built inside the pizzeria everything is still prepared just like it used to be, with selected stone-ground flours and sourdough.

The menu also features historic pizzas such as the Mastunicola, probably the first pizza ever, white with lard, pecorino cheese, pepper and basil, but also the Marinara, the Margherita in a double version, with ancient Neapolitan tomatoes, a Slow Food presidium, basil and fiordilatte cheese from Agerola, and in an even older version that recovers the recipe for tomato sauce by Ippolito Cavalcanti, Duke of Buonvicino.

A visit to Giardino Torre cannot fail to end with limoncello liquor prepared with lemons grown on site…After all, who would have ever said that here you can really feel “like a king” eating pizza and early vegetables from the garden?

Giardino Torre can be reached with the shuttle service (not always active, we recommend calling Delizie Reali to check the availability) from the Porta Grande entrance of the Capodimonte Museum or from Porta Miano, a pleasant 20-minute walk.

The Secret

At Giardino Torre you will notice, among the tools of the ancient greenhouses, an unusual and fascinating color: it is the “Vitriol of Cyprus”, a turquoise blue used over the decades for its functional fungicidal properties in environments with high humidity levels.

Useful Info

Museum and Royal Wood of Capodimonte
Delizie Reali
c/o Real Bosco di Capodimonte, entrance from Porta Miano
Via Miano 2
80133 Napoli
Wed-Fri 10.00 – 17.00, Sat and Sun 9.00 – 18.00
The Pizzeria is open only on Saturday and Sunday
Tel. +39 081 2241770

Free entrance to Giardino Torre and the Park

Cocktails: from 7 euro
Appetizers: from 10 euro
First courses: from 12 euro
Second courses: from 15 euro
Pizzas: from 9 euro