Welcome to the site Napoliforme

The entire coastal strip of Campania was considered by Roman patricians and intellectuals to be the ideal place to relax and spend long holidays, more or less peaceful, immersed in a nature of extraordinary beauty. The Roman aristocracy from the late republican age and then linked to the imperial court (from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD) lived within the 'system of villas' that characterised the entire Gulf of Naples, from the Sorrento peninsula to Cape Miseno, residences for leisure and productive activities and the hub of the Empire's political decisions, particularly after Augustus' stays on the coast and Emperor Tiberius' decision to move to Capri. The villas, as well as being places of leisure and rest, were often also agricultural and breeding centres: true self-sufficient 'food industries' with a considerable production of wine, oil, cheese, grain, game and, if by the sea, fish, molluscs and moray eels. The villas are in the Vesuvius area, such as the luxurious Villa San Marco and Villa di Arianna in Stabiae, a city destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, 'rediscovered' in the eighteenth century thanks to excavations commissioned by the Bourbon kings, and on the Sorrento coast: places coveted for their tranquillity, enchanting landscapes, mild climate and Greek culture. In Sorrento immense maritime domus and villas, the Villa of Agrippa Postumo and the Villa of Pollio Felice, are cited and described with admiration by famous intellectuals and poets and still remembered in legends of later centuries. In Massa Lubrense, the Villa di Villazzano has returned capitals and marble reliefs that give evidence of the refined and expensive taste of the ancient owners. And Villa Jovis on Capri, the last residence of Emperor Tiberius, between history and myth, perpetuates the ideal of beauty and magic embodied by these lands.