The Netflix back-to-school vibe has a distinctly old-fashioned smell: on September 22, 2026, Minerva – The School arrives on the platform, the new series by Ivan Silvestrini (whom many will remember for directing the early seasons of Mare Fuori), set in a strict Neapolitan military high school where wake-up is dawn, smartphones and civilian clothes are banned, and even falling in love is discouraged for students.
Here are the locations, true historical gems of Campania, where the new school drama was shot and which features among its cast, among others, Massimiliano Gallo, Cristiana Capotondi, Irene Maiorino, and Raiz.
What the series is about
Minerva is a prestigious military high school. Here, in the first year, the three leads of the new Netflix series gather: Vincenzo (Biagio Venditti), a boy who dreams of pursuing the same military career as his father; Camilla (Margherita Buoncristiani), who comes from the north from a wealthy, pampering family and who, now being enrolled in a military school, tries to be put back in line; and Salvo (Ciro Minnopoli), a boy raised in a foster home on the outskirts of Naples who joined Minerva just to try to understand what really happened the previous year to his friend Francesco while he was attending the school.
Alongside them move the grown-ups: Achille Giordano, the stern (at least on the surface) headmaster of the school played by Massimiliano Gallo; a young history and philosophy teacher played by Cristiana Capotondi who is the only one to challenge the rigid rules of the school and to push the students to ask questions; Major Teresa Bonaiuto, a character portrayed by Irene Maiorino, where rigor and empathy meet.
Where the series was filmed
Everything in the Minerva – The School series revolves around the high school: visually as well, and this clearly influenced the choice of locations.
The Portici Royal Palace
To emphasize the prestige surrounding the school and to bring Minerva to life on screen, the Portici Royal Palace was chosen, also thanks to the support of the Campania Region Film Commission.
Built in 1738 by the will of the King of Naples, Charles of Bourbon, and his wife Maria Amalia of Saxony, in an area already frequented by aristocratic families of the time, it remained for a long period in use by the Bourbon court before becoming, as it is today, home to the Faculty of Agriculture of the Federico II University.
The magnificence of the spaces, recalling those of other Bourbon residences such as the most famous Royal Palace of Caserta, owes its grandeur to architects like Luigi Vanvitelli involved in the design. The “French-style” furnishings, inspired by the splendor of the court of Louis XIV, owe their presence to the sojourn of Gioacchino Murat.
Inside the Portici Palace, among the locations where Minerva – The School was filmed, it is easy to recognize the library with its historic shelves that house a significant corpus of 18th- and 19th-century works, many in original editions.
The Pompeian Room, named for the frescoes that recall in color and decorative elements the villas of ancient Pompeii, was transformed in the series into the commander’s office.
The teachers’ room is instead the Council Room, recognizable by walls clad in a special yellow silk produced at San Leucio – a district of Caserta that Ferdinand VI tried to turn into an utopian community capable of autonomous survival through artisanal crafts – the sole original tapestry surviving in the Palace.
The entrance exam and the sword ceremony, two pivotal moments in the students’ journey within Minerva, take place in the Guards’ Room: a space facing the royal apartment, easily recognizable by the ceiling fresco celebrating the Bourbons’ good governance.
The flag-raising ritual that marks the start of each new day at the school is performed in the iconic rear courtyard of the Palace: exedra-shaped, cut in two by what used to be the road to Calabria, it overlooks the sea and the gardens of the lower park and hosts—among the palace’s most curious attractions—a solar analemmatic clock.
Villa Campolieto
As the eight episodes unfold and Francesco’s mysterious story comes to light, there is an environment, the school’s underground corridors, that takes on as much importance as the official spaces of classrooms, teachers’ rooms, offices and common areas. The underground scenes of Minerva were shot at a location no less prestigious from a historical and architectural standpoint: Villa Campolieto.
It is an aristocratic residence along what is known as the Golden Mile: a stretch of highway—the old royal road to Calabria—between Ercolano and Torre del Greco, dotted with Bourbon noble residences. Today owned by the Fondazione Ville Vesuviane and open to the public, Villa Campolieto was commissioned in the mid-eighteenth century by Prince Luzio De Sangro, Duke of Casacalenda, to architect Mario Gioffredo, who was later replaced by Luigi Vanvitelli.
Among the villa’s most distinctive elements, clearly recognizable in many scenes of Netflix’s new school drama, are the rear façade with the elliptical colonnade overlooking the sea and the grand staircase inspired by the Royal Palace of Caserta with a central ramp and two side ramps, enriched by a mascaron, a grotesque and a vestibule with niches occupied by statues with mythological subjects.
Inside one of the most prestigious rooms is the dining room with a ceiling frescoed with allegorical figures and the depiction of a cultivated vineyard where the family enjoyed entertaining guests.
From Villa Campolieto’s terrace one enjoys a unique view of the Gulf of Naples with Capri, the Sorrento Peninsula, Ischia and Posillipo in the background.
The sun-drenched panoramas that in recent years have made Naples and its surroundings a much-appreciated setting for international productions for both the small and the large screen provide a counterpoint, in the series, to the sometimes dark events that animate the school community: in other words, the Minerva – The School locations also reflect the tension between what happens in daylight and what moves behind the scenes of the prestigious military high school.
