The Ponziano botanical garden, located on the top of a hill overlooking the port of Ponza and the surrounding sea, was created on the initiative of Dr. Biagio Vitiello who in the eighties promoted its construction so that it would act as a stimulus for the protection of the natural heritage of the archipelago. The property, passed to him by his great-grandfather who bought it in the 18th century from the last Bourbon governor, also includes a suggestive neoclassical “Belvedere” with a hexagonal plan, with six openings for enjoying the beauty of the local landscape.
The garden, which is accessed via a tree-lined path that winds through the ruins of an ancient Bourbon tunnel where the forced domiciled persons of the time were kept, includes over seventy plant species typical of the Ponziano archipelago.
Its conformation is “naturalistic”, with a random arrangement of the specimens that gives the visitor the opportunity to grasp the effective ecological relevance of the place in a more balanced way.
The main objective of a botanical garden of this type is to establish a real “biogenetic reservoir”, through which not only to save species typical of the archipelago at risk of “local extinction”, but also to create the conditions to proceed to significant reproductions of the species.
The safeguarding of biodiversity, not only of plants, and the defense of sustainable art are the two statutory tracks of the Eumorfia cultural association, born ten years ago again by the will of Dr. Biagio Vitiello in order to promote and disseminate the peculiar characteristics of the territory, its history, its flora and fauna.
ARTIST’S RESIDENCE
The idea of the artist residence was born in the summer of 2022, thanks to the collaboration with the Ravenna sculptor Laura Pagliai who, fascinated by the botanical garden and the sea of Ponza, organizes an exhibition of her sculptures “en plein air” .
The availability of Dr. Biagio Vitiello stimulates the idea of a fusion between the love of art and the passion for nature, the landscape and the island of Ponza.
From this meeting was born the Ponza LandArt project, in its 1st edition in 2023, which aims to create an open-air museum of contemporary art that is enriched every year with new works, bringing together two not so distant worlds, art and nature.