In designing the National Vesuvius Park railway we chose to favor the process of renaturalization, by assimilating the stretch of disused railway into the area’s cultural and environmental networks, and by permitting, through a slow pace of operations, a process of reflection. With this outlook, the park does not exhaust its function as introduction to museum, accommodation, recreation and service activities, but becomes a gateway to the knowledge of the site’s cultural and environmental heritage. The mechanical lift towards Vesuvius thus becomes an infrastructure that looks over the landscape, an artifice that blends in with nature, a place of environmental education, knowledge of the historical memory of the sites, as well as a place of experimentation and innovation, thanks to the scattering along the way of works by contemporary artists. The area features a succession of natural and manmade landscapes that are particularly diversified, and the architecture of the stations and stops was conceived to generate a narrative and emotional itinerary capable of creating new morphological, ecological and functional relationships. The railway becomes energy flow, magma, fluid that in flowing transforms the simple trip into a rich and exciting perceptual experience.
The first is Cook Station, the startiing point of the whole operation; the second is Canteroni Station, followed by Observatory Station, located in the vicinity of the observatory Museum. The fourth is Tirone Station, followed by Two Volcanoes, the last station before you get to the last stretch of the Volcano Overlook.

credits | design architects: TStudio | landscape: J.Gomes da Silva – Global Arquitectura (Portugal); V. Mastrangelo | urban planning: R.Pavia | engineering: Girpa S.p.a | feasibility: V. Fabietti; E. Lo Monaco