Villa Campolieto is a Vesuvian villa in Ercolano, on the seaward side of the old royal road to Calabria, on the stretch that took the name Miglio d'Oro precisely because of these noble residences of the Bourbon age. It was built from 1755 for Lucio di Sangro, Duke of Casacalenda.
What to see
The design was by Mario Gioffredo, but after some years, owing to disagreements with the dukes, he was dismissed with the work well advanced. After a brief spell by Michelangelo Giustiniani, the job went to Luigi Vanvitelli, who directed the work from 1763 to 1773 with few but substantial changes; on his death his son Carlo completed the building in 1775. The plan is quadrangular: four blocks separated by the arms of a central Greek-cross gallery, at whose crossing is a dome lit by four oval windows. The front façade, in smooth rustication with a stucco base, has two tiers of windows, those of the main floor with triangular pediments.
More interesting is the rear façade, with a large portico of round arches: Gioffredo had conceived it as circular, Vanvitelli made it elliptical and horseshoe-shaped, joined to the building by two depressed arches on Tuscan capitals. Vanvitelli also oversaw the interior decoration, with works by Jacopo Cestaro, Fedele Fischetti and Gaetano Magrì. After the death of the duke's son Scipione in 1805, the villa was divided among his nephews and declined, until military occupation during the Second World War; after the war it was entrusted to the Ente per le Ville Vesuviane and restored by the architect Paolo Romanello.
Visiting
Today the villa houses the Stoà, a business management school, and hosts cultural and social events. Visiting possibilities and hours should be checked with the Ente per le Ville Vesuviane.
Our editors' tip
Film lovers will recognise it: the banquet scene of Dino Risi's «Operazione San Gennaro», of 1966, was shot on the central staircase and on the first floor, and the villa, not yet restored, also appears in the first episode of the television drama «Il cappello del prete» of 1970. In the eighties the graduation ball of the Nunziatella cadets was often held here.
