Description of the attraction
The Mercatello Park in Salerno was officially opened in February 1998 in the presence of Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, then President of the Italian Republic. Spread over an area of 10 hectares, it is one of the largest urban parks in Italy in relation to the number of urban population. It unites three zones - Marikonda, Mercatello and Quartier Europe.
A characteristic feature of the park are small rivers that flow through its territory, greenhouses in which you can admire the cacti donated by Salerno by the Aquaviva Foundation, rock gardens, an artificial lake and a canal. Huge space reserved for outdoor performances.
Particular attention should be paid to the aforementioned collection of cacti, collected by the famous Aquaviva family and today is the public domain of the city's residents. Precisely in order to place and present this collection to the public, the municipality of Salerno decided to build a greenhouse on the territory of the Mercatello Park - a wonderful place from an aesthetic point of view and a real artificially created ecosystem. It took six months to prepare the soil, plant the cacti, provide them with antiparasitic care, etc. Today, in the collection, housed in and around the greenhouse, you can see very rare plant species - agave, euphorbia, jerky, echinococcus and echinocereus. And the greenhouses themselves are one of the few of their kind in southern Italy - a great place for botanists and simple nature lovers, a popular tourist attraction and a real oasis of relaxation for the residents of Salerno.
