The Miglio d'Oro is a stretch of the lower SS 18 Tirrena, once called the Strada regia delle Calabrie (Royal Road of Calabrie), which runs from the fourth mile located at the foot of the Villa De Bisogno in Casaluce, which is located at Corso Resina No. 189 in Herculaneum, to Palazzo Vallelonga, located in Torre del Greco, which is very well known for its rich history and landscape and also for the presence of splendid eighteenth-century Vesuvian villas.

Why visit Golden Mile:

The Miglio d'Oro proper is a straight stretch of road between Herculaneum and Torre del Greco whose length measured exactly one mile according to the system of units of measurement in use in the first half of the eighteenth century. It had two precise terms: just before the entrance gate of Villa De Bisogno on Corso Resina in Herculaneum (milestone IV), after the entrance to the Herculaneum Archaeological Excavations, and Corso Vittorio Emanuele at number 87 (milestone V, unfortunately now gone) in Torre del Greco. Within those terms stood: Villa Campolieto, Villa Favorita, Villa Aprile in Herculaneum and Palazzo Vallelonga and Villa Mennella in Torre del Greco, and many others.

The Golden Mile was originally called "golden" because of the gardens full of orchards, such as oranges, lemons, and tangerines, all along its route.

When Charles of Bourbon ascended the throne of the Kingdom of Naples in 1735, he decided to move to the villa that the Duke d'Elboeuf had built for himself, because he was enchanted and enraptured by the beauty of the landscape and the mildness of the climate. But that was not all, because the entire Neapolitan court and many other nobles also decided to move along the Miglio d'Oro, where the lush forest stretched all the way to the sea, the panorama swept over the entire Gulf of Naples with views of Capri, Ischia and Procida, and there was the fascination of the vestiges of antiquity thanks to the first excavations to unearth the ancient city of Herculaneum. Here the nobility began to have villas and gardens built in Rococo and neoclassical styles by architects of the caliber of Luigi Vanvitelli, Ferdinando Fuga, Ferdinando Sanfelice, Domenico Antonio Vaccaro and Mario Goffredo.

Many villas had their facades exposed on the royal road of the Golden Mile, in such a way that they could be easily admired, flanked by wide parking areas for the fast flow of carriages, which was very intense during the holidays and festivals at the time of the Bourbon reign. The garden, which was often separate from the villa, could be accessed by terraces or stairs with an unfailingly long and wide avenue, where with a system of vines and trellises the pergola could be obtained for pleasant walks. It was the garden that was the real centerpiece of the villa, where people went wild in showing off their magnificence, competing in having the most beautiful garden. They stretched all the way to the beach among flower beds, small groves, pavilions, gazebos and the exclusive caffeaus, a kind of small huts built to spend in the quiet a couple of hours a day. An unfailing element in the gardens was the effigy of St. Gennaro, an anti-Vesuvius symbol, given his beneficial powers, earning the title in the eruption of 1767, when the lava stopped at the entrance to the city while all the people, with Father Rocco in the lead, prayerfully invoked his help.

The magnificent villas were often all built in succession and aligned with each other in a strict pattern. Thus came into being a unique architectural complex in the world in terms of quantity and beauty.

The decline of the Golden Mile came with the construction of Italy's first railway line, the Naples-Portici in 1839. The railway line coincided with the development in the area of a substantial number of leather industries. Shipyards, which later became prestigious, sprang up in the port areas. Local industrial development attracted increasing numbers of employees in manufacturing and ship mechanics who began to inhabit the area. This caused the departure of the nobility who had established vacation homes there.

The most important things to know about Golden Mile:

Speaking of preservation, the owners of the villas along the Golden Mile, mostly heirs of the Bourbon aristocrats who had built them, were unable to ensure their preservation, which had already been jeopardized by the looting and bombing of World War II and subsequent building speculation.

So, the Italian Parliament, by Law No. 578 of July 29, 1971, established the Vesuvian Villas Board with the "purpose of providing for the conservation, restoration and enhancement of the artistic heritage constituted by the Vesuvian Villas." There are 122 Vesuvian Villas surveyed and protected by the Authority today.