The small park located behind the church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta , near the railway station of Mergellina , encloses a part of the eastern slopes of the Posillipo promontory, from the Greek name Pausilypon ("break of pain") given to the splendid Roman villa that it stood on the hill to indicate peace and quiet.

The garden area hosts monuments relevant to the history of the Neapolitan area and its name originates from the attribution to the poet Publio Virgilio Marone (Andes, 70 BC - Brindisi, 19 BC) of the Roman tomb located there. This interpretation was officially reaffirmed with the inauguration of the park in 1930, after a substantial restoration and consolidation intervention that gave the area the appearance still observable today, full of very interesting landscape views.

At the entrance of the park, taking the avenue that climbs with several ramps along the hill slopes, there is an imposing aedicule placed there in 1668 by the viceroy Pietro d'Aragona, containing two inscriptions which also recall the presence of the Virgilian tomb. Nearby, in a large niche on the wall, there is a bust of Virgil on a small column, a tribute in 1931 by the students of the Ohio Academy.

The funerary mausoleum , built in opus reticulatum at the beginning of the imperial age, is of the columbarium type with a cylindrical drum on a quadrangular base, in which the square-shaped funerary cell with a barrel vault is obtained, illuminated by slits and equipped with ten niches to house the cinerary urns. Also known as the “Grotta vecchia di Pozzuoli”, this gallery was built in the Augustan age by the freedman Lucius Cocceius Aucto.