Villa d'Elboeuf, Baroque villa in Portici, Italy

Villa d'Elboeuf is a rectangular baroque palace in Portici, beside the port of Granatello, built between 1711 and 1713 by Ferdinando Sanfelice and Cristoforo Schor on an earlier convent building. It originally had two floors, a loggia facing Vesuvius and two sea-facing terraces, one toward Torre del Greco and one toward Naples. Its sea facade had two portals reached by an elliptical double staircase with marble and piperno balustrade; two floors were added later.

Emmanuel Maurice of Lorraine, prince of Elbeuf, obtained the usufruct of part of a monastery at the Granatello in 1709 and full ownership in 1711, after paying for a new monastery. The villa was built between 1711 and 1713 by Ferdinando Sanfelice and Cristoforo Schor on an earlier conventual building. In 1716 Elbeuf sold it for 11,000 ducats to Giacinto Falletti Arcadi, duke of Cannalonga, who turned the rear orchards into a garden of exotic plants. Charles of Bourbon bought it in September 1742 with 177 marble busts and many ancient columns and statues found at Herculaneum.

The villa's name comes from Emmanuel Maurice of Lorraine, prince of Elbeuf, who built it between 1711 and 1713. Charles VII later used it as the maritime annex of the Royal Site of Portici, with a bridge linking the two gardens, and had the peschiere reali built on the terrace: artificial basins filled with seawater where he could fish. Fishing in the whole harbour of Granatello was banned for this.

The villa is a ruin: roofs, interior partitions and the marble balustrades of the outdoor staircases are lost, and the building is fenced off, so it is viewed from outside rather than entered. It stands beside the Naples-Portici railway line near the Granatello harbour; a stretch of the outer wall along the tracks collapsed onto the rails in February 2014.

King Charles III took shelter here during a storm in 1738 and was so struck by the setting that he decided to build the Royal Palace of Portici right next to it. That unplanned stop ended up reshaping the development of the entire coast.