Caserta Palace: history and curiosity about the royal palace of Caserta

Caserta Palace: history and curiosity about the royal palace of Caserta

If you visit Campania for the first time, an obligatory stop is the royal palace of Caserta, conceived as the Italian response to Versailles, where the royal family of Naples, the Bourbons, built a palace where luxury, love for the art and beauty combine perfectly, creating a unique jewel of its kind, which can be visited only internally, or only in the Royal Park, and which can be visited (which we recommend, if time permits) both inside and outside of the Palace. Whatever type of visit you intend to make, you will not have to worry about anything with usas we will create the luxury experience you deserve.  Discover the unbridled luxury in which the last royal family of the Kingdom of Naples, the Bourbons, lived. The Royal Palace bears witness to their love of beauty and patronage for art.

Caserta Palace: history about the royal palace of Caserta

The Caserta Royal Palace with adjoining Park was designed according to the wishes of King Charles III of Bourbon by Luigi Vanvitelli, one of the greatest Italian architects of the 18th century and completed by his son Carlo Vanvitelli. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997 as an architectural and landscape asset, together with the San Leucio complex and the Vanvitelli aqueduct, it was listed by Franck Ferrand, as the largest royal residence in the world by volume.

Considered the last great achievement of the Italian Baroque, its works were begun in 1752 and completely completed in 1845, but already in 1780 it was stably e inhabited by the royalty. The building has 1200 rooms and 1 742 windows, is 37.83 meters high (about 124.11 feet) and is 249 meters long (about 816.93 feet), covering an area of around 47 000 m² (about 5 059 038 ft²). It also has 11 park acres, where the waterfalls, fountains and pools of the garden have been aligned and designed to create a magnificent "telescope effect" that is lost to sight. Since there is so much to see, we recommend wearing comfortable shoes to immerse yourself in this slice of real life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Caserta Palace: small guide to the interior of the royal palace of Caserta

Inside the royal palace of Caserta you can immediately see the grand staircase of Vanvitelli, wonder and inspiring model of all the most beautiful staircases in the world, from where you can then visit the Royal Theater of Court (whose beauty so fascinated the king of France to be copied in Versaille's Opera Royale).

From here you can continue on to the splendid and rich Royal Apartments, which depart from the boardrooms as that of the throne to continue in the private apartments of the king and queen. You will then see the very rich Palatina library, a collection of over 14 thousand volumes, including very rare works of Botany; then you will pass to the Pinacoteca, where there are paintings by the greatest authors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, you will continue in the room dedicated to the Bourbon Nativity, real and typical tradition of Napleswhere the shepherds have rich clothes embroidered in gold, silver, precious stones, corals and silk, which was produced by the Real Seteria of San Leucio , and you will finish the tour in the suggestive Palatine Chapel.

Thanks to the restoration work, from the principles of November 2019, the north wing of the apartments of the eighteenth century can be visited again. Recently, the restoration of the frescoes in the Sala dei Porti della Sicilia and in the Sala dei Port in Campania have started, which will soon be open to the public again.

Caserta Palace: small guide of the Royal Park

The Royal Park of Caserta Palace is an integral part of the summer; this Park includes the garden, which stretches for 120 hectares, partly in plain, partly on hilly terrain. The park starts from the palace and goes on a long promenade with artificial waterfalls and fountains, with beautiful sculptures that represent mythical scenes.

Along the way you will find yourself in the "old grove", the initial part "Italian garden" where the Pernesta Tower is, or "Castelluccia", a kind of miniature castle surrounded by a moat and an impressive drawbridge. It seems that the area was once used for picnics and a place of recreation for fake land battles. The water that feeds the moat flows through a small canal. Following it backwards, you will reach the "Peschiera Vecchia", an artificial lake with a small island in the center, wanted in 1769 by Ferdinando IV to delight in small naval battles.

From the "Peschiera Vecchia" you will pass to the Fontana Margherita which is inserted in a circular flowerbed, and closes the Italian garden. From here the path opens on a spectacular botanical garden, called "The English Garden," designed in the 1780s, which has three longitudinally developed tanks: the Peschiera Grande, an artificial basin almost half a kilometer that ends with the fountain of Dolphins from whose mouths water flows. A little further on there is the complex of the Fountain of Aeolus with its porticoed hemicycle and the Fountain of Ceres carved while holding in its hands the image of the Trinacria. We then move on to the fountain of Venus and Adonis and from here we reach the wide staircase that leads to the fountain of Diana and Actaeon.

The English garden, which hosts a chalet and greenhouses, is also rich in small rivers, waterfalls, small lakes in which small temples, avenues and alleys are reflected, has many plant species such as plane trees, cedars of Lebanon, pines, cypresses, magnolias, palm trees , succulent plants and camellias, imported here for the first time in Europe from Japan in 1880. The bodies of water are embellished by the presence of aquatic plants and sculptures depicting fake collapses and Roman niches. Finally there is the spectacular waterfall, 78 meters high, ending in the underlying forest of San Silvestro from which, in a stream of roaring waterfalls, it then flows into the pool of Diana and Actaeon.

Caserta Palace: some curiosity

In the summer of 2019, the Royal Palace of Caserta hosted the Tire archery competitions for the thirtieth year of the Universiade.

In the second half of the eighteenth century the Queen of Naples Maria Carolina of Habsburg Lorraine had a bidet installed, a sanitary device used for intimate hygiene and to wash her feet in her personal bathroom, becoming not only the first in use in Italy, but also the first present in a Reggia on Italian territory (today it is present in all Italian baths). Its use was in fact unknown to the kingdom of Piedmont, so that 1861, with the birth of Italy, the bidet was inventoried among the contents of the palace as a "strange guitar-shaped object".

Caserta Palace on TV and Cinema

The Royal Palace of Caserta is an extraordinary film set: George Lucas, the famous film director, has shot here several scenes of "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace " and " Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones ", first and second episode of the Star Wars series (fans they will recognize the interior of the palace as the interiors of the palace of the planet Naboo).

In 2006, the director J.J. Abrams, shot here almost all the scenes set in the Vatican City of "Mission Impossible: III".

The director Ron Howard from 17 to 20 June 2008 has used it for some shots of the film "Angels and Demons" inspired by the novel by Dan Brown: those in the film are referred to as the audience hall, Vatican gardens and the Vatican library, are in reality the interiors, the gardens and the palatine library of the Royal Palace of Caserta. The choice depended on the Vatican, which at the time did not release the filming authorization.

Also in Italian cinema the Royal Palace of Caserta was the location of some films such as "Ferdinando e Carolina" and "Io speriamo che me la Cavo" by Lina Wertmüller, "I tre aquilotti" by Mario Mattoli, "Sing Sing" by Sergio Corbucci , (where the interiors of Buchingham Palace are actually the interiors of the Caserta Palace). "Women and bandits" by Mario Soldati, Ferdinando I, King of Naples with the three De Filippo brothers, "Il Pap'occhio" by Renzo Arbore, "They called them ... brigands!" By Pasquale Squitieri.

That's why you can't miss such a wonder. Contact uswe will be happy with carriers.

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