Built in one of the happiest and most evocative positions, downstream of the Bourbon road of Calabrie, not far from the Royal Palace of Portici and contiguous to the Villa Favorita, Villa Campolieto was built by the will of Prince Luzio De Sangro, Duke of Casacalenda who in 1755, he entrusted the design and execution of the works to Mario Gioffredo. Forced to abandon the work around 1760, he was replaced by Luigi Vanvitelli who, from 1763 to 1773 (the year of his death) directed the works, completed in 1775 by his son Carlo.

At the foot of Vesuvius, in a splendid panoramic position, dominated on one side by the power of the volcano and on the other by the Gulf of Naples, stands Villa delle Ginestre which hosted Giacomo Leopardi in the last years of his life. The Villa was built at the end of the seventeenth century by Canon Simioli who used it as a summer residence, often hosting important personalities of the Neapolitan culture such as Luigi Vanvitelli who probably designed the staircase leading to the upper floor.

Along that stretch of the royal road of Calabria, which due to the splendor of the buildings that opened on it, was renamed the Golden Mile, not far from the famous Villa Campolieto, stands the Villa Petti Ruggiero. The positioning of this factory, on the slopes of Vesuvius in a hilly area rather far from the sea, makes it belong to a category of "rustic residences" once linked above all to agricultural production activities, devoid of those claims of elegance typical of villas on the coastal strip.

The imposing building, the work of Ferdinando Fuga, called the "Favorita" by King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon in homage to Queen Maria Carolina of Austria, has a rather unusual plan that differs from the recurring patterns typical of the eighteenth-century villas of the Mile d 'Gold. The façade, which develops along the Via Regia delle Calabrie, does not in fact have openings along the central axis that allow direct communication from the road to the park.