Villa Floridiana
Now a chiefly residential neighborhood, the Vomero Hill was once the patrician address of many of Naples's most extravagant estates. La Floridiana is the sole surviving 19th-century example, built in 1817 on order of Ferdinand IV for Lucia Migliaccio, duchess of Floridia—their portraits hang in a room to the left of the villa's main entrance. Only nine shocking months after his first wife, the Habsburg Maria Carolina, died, Ferdinand secretly married Lucia, his longtime mistress, when the court was still in mourning. Scandal ensued, but the king and his new wife were too happy to worry, escaping high above the city to this elegant little estate. Immersed in a delightful park done in the English style by Degenhardt (also responsible for the park in Capodimonte), the villa was designed by architect Antonio Niccolini in the Neoclassical style. It now houses the Museo Nazionale della Ceramica Duca di Martina, a museum devoted to the decorative arts of the 18th and 19th centuries. Countless cases on three floors display what Edith Wharton described as "all those fragile and elaborate trifles the irony of fate preserves when brick and marble crumble": Sèvres, Limoges, and Meissen porcelains, gold watches, ivory fans, glassware, enamels, majolica vases, as well as one of the most significant collections of Oriental antiquities in Italy. Sadly, there are no period rooms left to see.
