Dalla città alla “città di ville”. Un viaggio da Napoli alle falde del Vesuvio tra architettura reale e realtà virtuale

This paper deals with a reflection on the journey, between architecture and painting, developing the topic in different thematic layers: the trip away from the city, chaotic and overcrowded, that the eighteenth century Neapolitan aristocracy chooses to take along a mile that separates Naples from Vesuvian area, for its summer stays, between the slopes of Vesuvius and the sea, a privileged place for recreation and leisure residences that are gradually building; the journey of a pictorial genre, Quadraturism, which despite having its greatest expressions in central Italy, when declined through the architectures painted in the eighteenth-century Vesuvian villas reaches levels of extraordinary originality; finally, the realization, by digital technologies, of a virtual journey, so-called Virtual Tour: the remote exploration able to perform, both in the real 3d space, as in the painted 2d space.