The Mile of Gold

The route has beginning from the eastern periphery  of Naples with the quarters of Saint Giovanni a Teduccio and Barra and proceeds towards Saint George a Cremano, Portici , Ercolano and Torre del Greco, along a continuous distance of 24 kilometers.
The vesuvian country and these " country houses " all between the coast and the slopes of the Vesuvio, become particularly attend  from the nobility after that, in 1738, king Charles of  Bourbon wanted to construct to Portici a real villa, not far from that one of the prince of Elboeuf. The fashion of holidays in these places, in spite of the constant threat of the volcano, is lasted until the first of  1900's.
On the bourbonic road, beginning of the old artery that connected Naples with Reggio Calabria (Road Direction of the Calabrie): the diggings of Ercolano, the "reggia", and, between Ercolano and Pompei, the renamed section Mile of gold, where there are the most important between the eighteenth century residences, in late Neapolitan baroque style , would from the neapolitan aristocracy, " the villas of delights "

Portici and the "Reggia"

The reputation of Portici re-ascend to far age: Petrarch and Boccaccio stayed here, it is  extolled from the Pontano and from the Martirano in elegant backs, it has accommodated king, ambassadors, dignitaries, artists, coming from from all over. The landscape is extraordinary, the fertile air healthy, the country is fertile; only the volcano gives some worry, but not to Charles of Bourbon who acquires lands and palaces in the zone, with the initial idea  to create an immense estate, for the hunting of the quails, that  goes from the sea to the Vesuvio.
The great jobs of restructure of the buildings already existing begin in 1738 and very soon it takes  the idea to construct  a real palace, the architect was the Roman Antonio Canevari. It begins " the new life " of Portici, has beginning, parallel, a period of intense artistic-architectonic activity along all the vesuvian section of coast, species on the Mile of gold. They rise, around the real residence, luxurious rococo  villas .
The palace, set up second an axis that goes from the stratums of the volcano to the sea, is divided in two bodies of factory from the road of the Calabrie, than from there it crosses the court passing under two fly-over bridges opened on short sides. The inside has parietal sculptures and paintings seventeenth and nineteenth-century and conserve still some ancient medical report between those, of the diggings of Ercolano, deposits  here until the transfer to the Palace of the Regi Studies, today Archaeological Museum of Naples. Towards the sea there is an immense park, designed and arranged from Francisco Geri with kiosks, the Fontanas, fish farms, as well as digging roman elements , ulterior enriched later on from Ferdinand IV; towards the mountain a forest with a blockhouse, a time used after the military practices.
The "reggia" of Portici becomes, in 1872, center of the R. Advanced School of Agriculture, in the 1924 R. Agrarian Advanced Institute and, finally, from 1935 it accommodates the faculty of Agrarian of the University of Naples.

The vesuvian villas:

Campolieto Villa
Course Resin 283, Ercolano

Risen in a happy and evocative position  , in the valley of the bourbonic road of the Calabrie , not far away from the reggia of Portici and contiguous to the Favorite Villa, Campolieto Villa came built up for will of Prince Luzio di Sangro, Duca di Casacalenda, than in 1755, entrusted the plan and the execution of the jobs to Mario Gioffredo. These set up the building to square plant, articulating it in four blocks separate  from the arms of a center gallery in  Greek cross; on the posterior facade it grafted a circular porch - lookout covered towards the sea - and it arranged the stable and the remittance of the carriages.
Around to 1760, when the jobs were already in advanced phase of execution, Gioffredo was forced to abandon the work as a result of the contrasts rebelled with the Casacalenda and at first was replaced from Michelangelo Giustiniani and subsequently from Luigi Vanvitelli that, from 1763 to the 1773 (year of its death ) it directed the jobs completed in the 1775 from the son Carl.
If the participation of Giustiniani were limited to the prosecution of the work of Gioffredo, therefore it was not that one of Vanvitelli that brought substantial modifications to the original plan. Vanvitelli, in fact, transformed the great staircase main carrying it beyond the original volume of the factory; it modified the design of the round one interrupting of the perimeter in correspondence of the ends of the posterior facade, along which it had arranged a rectilinear porch. Spreading the obtained heads therefore, circular changed in elliptic shape the space originally. It realized still important modifications to the inner spaces supervising subsequently, to all the jobs of decoration that were realized  from painters of the age.
The Campolieto Villa, completed in 1775, it had a period of splendor limited in the time, in fact at the death of the Duke di Sangro in 1792, the assets of the family passed to the first son Scipione who died in 1805 without directed heirs . Therefore, already to first of the 800, the property came uniform between several the grandsons of the duke set offing towards the decline, culminated after the military occupation in the years of the last conflict, in the abandonment of the  now tottering building.
The Campolieto Villa, acquired in the 1977 from the Agency for the Vesuviane Villas, it has been brought back to its initial splendor with the execution of jobs of static consolidation and conservative restoration to the ends to give back to the use integrated with the requirements of the international collectivity with monumental. It has been be a matter of a complex work, particularly difficult yield from the precarious state of conservation of the monument, whose completion represents the best testimony of the engagement of the Agency in one exemplary realization of the possibilities of recovery of the patrimony of the Vesuviane Villas.

Ruggiero Villa
Via  Rossi 40, Ercolano

Not far away from Campolieto Villa it rises the Villa Ruggiero Petti.
The positioning of such factory, to the stratums of the Vesuvio, therefore an hilly area  rather far from the sea, make it  to belong to a category of " peasant dwellings " tied a time above all to productive activities of agricultural type lacking in those typical pretensions of elegance of the villas of wraps coastal.
It was constructed for wanting of the baron Petti towards the half of the ' 700 and belonged to this family until 1863, year in which passed to the Ruggiero.
The actual planimetric configuration of the villa does not correspond just to that original, as it can be noticed from the map of the Duke di Noja, turning out one asymmetric development of the bodies of factory regarding the longitudinal axis.
The villa it introduces along the road a facade of modest dimensions whose original proportions today turn out altered for the added one of a increased plan. In the composition of the facade, it dominates a beautiful portal, turned to all sixth, in piperno and marble white man with to ionic sides bugnate pilaster strips and capitals surmounted from a mixtilineal balcony. The decoration of the facade is constituted from eardrums in stucco that frame the openings of the raised plan and the noble plan.
The planimetric system is one of the most customary: the deep  body facing to the road prolonged in two short wings that, connected from a exedra, determine the space of the elliptic courtyard. The vestibule, place in axis with the passage of the exedra, is articulated in the succession of three spaces covered from times to cruise that are dilated in the part center determining them two exedrae where they find place the marble seats that follow the course of the bended lateral parts.
The prospect on the courtyard is sure the peculiar part of the factory: articulated from one "serliana", than support one terrace, with detached rococo taste . It introduces, in fact, in the inferior order, a division of pilaster strips  smooth that is repeated also on the short lateral wings that frame the three cross of the opened arcade on the courtyard. On the facade of the advanced plan, rear in order to give place to the terrace, the balconies are opened frame to you from cartouche and intentional in stucco and the part centers is arranged they a niche that accommodates the bust of S. Gennaro in the customary gesture to stop washes  of the volcano.
The terrace, whose alternate balustrade to the railings swelling hills in piperno in support of envelopes sculptural, second a recurrent reason in the Neapolitan seventeenth culture, constitutes the decorative episode richer than all the complex. From the shady tree-lined avenue of the garden closed on the bottom from one can here be noticed niche.

Favorite villa and Park on the sea
income Park via G. D' Annunzio, Ercolano

The imposing building, work of Ferdinand Fuga, called " the Favorite " from the king Charles of Bourbon in homage to Queen Maria Carolina of Austria, introduces rather unusual a planimetric system that differs from the typical recurrent outlines of the seventeenth villas of the Mile of Gold.
The facade, than is developed along the road does not introduce in fact, along the axis centers them openings that concur one directed communication from the road towards the park. The two courtyards of hit, asymmetric, they are places  laterally and the body centers  dilates them towards one director mails in axis with the sea, concluding itself to the raised plan, with terrazzo  placed in top of the semicircular great staircase. The stairs of connection between the plans  are placed to the extremities of the wings. The what's new of the architectonic composition of the villa not only goes attributed to the particular planimetric formulation, but also for the articulation of the spaces, the game of the levels staggered between the raised plan, the elliptic hall and the garden, you dull these sections from the late production baroque premises.
The great area of the park of the rich Favorite Villa of somewhat rare Mediterranean and exotic essences, interrupted in its continuity from the railway line and a roads axis, is concluded towards the sea with the borbonico landing place.
The Agency for the Vesuviane Villas, in the attempt of recover the territorial woven  of the district of Ercolano, after the restoration of the Villa Campolieto (1984) and Ruggiero ( 1991 ) and of the connected areas, has began the work of salvage of the  zone  at south of the Park of Villa Campolieto, where raises  some admirable constructions as the Little Building of the Mosaic, the dependence of the Villa and two coffee houses near the cost.