Guided tour of Portici

The Royal Palace of Portici is today the seat of the Department of Agriculture of the University of Naples, but it was meant to be the summer residence of the House of the Bourbons. King Charles and his wife Amalia loved to spend the best part of the year in the little village of Portici, not far from Naples, between the sea and Mount Vesuvius. The tour starts from the beautiful staircase and the rooms at the first floor to continue with the visit of the Herculanense Museum, an itinerary with multimedia installations that reminds the first museum that housed all the artifacts coming from the ruins of Herculaneum and then Pompei, and finally the Royal Chapel, that still keeps the organ on which the famous Mozart played for the royal family.

From the Neapolitan district of Barra and all along the coastal road that reaches the city of Torre Annunziata there are 122 aristocratic villas dating back to the 18th century, so beautiful that they named the road the “Golden Mile”. The nobles built their summer residences not far from the king’s Royal Palace in Portici. The ones that are visible today are villa Campolieto and villa Favorita Park, both rich in exotic and rare species of plants and villa delle Ginestre in Torre del Greco, where one of the most the famous Italian poets of the 19th century, Giacomo Leopardi spent part of his life.