Royal Palace of Caserta

Charles of Bourbon commissioned Luigi Vanvitelli in 1752 to build a palace to rival Versailles, inland and defensible: five floors, four courtyards, about twelve hundred rooms and a grand staircase designed so the whole ascent is visible from below. The park runs three kilometres straight from the facade in a sequence of basins and fountains rising to the Great Cascade, a seventy-eight-metre fall. Water comes from thirty-eight kilometres away through the Carolino aqueduct, which crosses the Maddaloni valley on a bridge of three tiers of arches. The English Garden beside it was laid out from 1786 in the informal manner.

History

Mario Gioffredo first proposed the idea in 1750 - a palace that would be a city in itself, housing the court and the political and cultural elite of Naples and Sicily, away from the sea and from crowded Naples - and building began in 1752 for Charles VII of Naples, later Charles III of Spain, with Luigi Vanvitelli as architect and Versailles as the model. Charles abdicated in 1759 to become king of Spain and never spent a night here; the people of Caserta Vecchia were moved ten kilometres to provide a workforce, a silk works at San Leucio was dressed as a park pavilion, and after Vanvitelli died in 1773 his son Carlo and other architects went on, though the original front wings were never built. When the Kingdom of Italy surveyed the contents in 1861, the bidet was listed as a strange object in the shape of a guitar; the palace held the Italian Air Force Academy from 1923 to 1943 and became a World Heritage Site in 1997 (Wikipedia, Royal Palace of Caserta).

The main sights

• The grand staircase - an ascent designed to be seen whole from below.
• The three-kilometre axis - basins and fountains rising to the cascade.
• The Great Cascade - a 78-metre fall fed by a 38-kilometre aqueduct.
• The English Garden - an informal garden with a false ruin and pond.

When to go

April to October; the park is long and exposed, with a shuttle bus or bicycles available for the walk to the cascade. The palace closes Tuesdays.

Before you go

The walk to the cascade and back is six kilometres with little shade; the shuttle costs extra. Fountains do not always run. Many palace rooms are closed.

Nearby

Naples lies south; the Sele plain is southeast.

Key facts