Royal Palace of Caserta — palace
Image by libellule789 from Pixabay

Royal Palace of Caserta

Reggia di Caserta

  • 2 min read
  • 41.073° N 14.327° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • King Charles laid the first stone himself on 20 January 1752, the day of his 36th birthday, yet he abdicated in 1759 and never spent a night there.
  • After Luigi Vanvitelli died in 1773, his son Carlo carried on the work, and the palace was only finally finished around 1845.
  • By 1760 more than 2,000 workers were labouring on the building site at the same time.
  • Vanvitelli published his designs in 1756 as a volume of engraved plates, so the palace was famous on paper long before it was built.
  • The large fish pond in the park, about 270 metres long, was used by Ferdinand IV to stage mock naval battles.
  • The Castelluccia, a miniature fortress with a drawbridge built in the park in 1769, served the young king for military games.
  • The English Garden, begun in 1786 by the German-born gardener John Andrew Graefer, was one of the first of its kind in Italy.
  • The palace has also appeared in Mission: Impossible III and Angels & Demons, besides its role as Naboo in Star Wars.
  • The palace measures about 247 by 190 metres, and the park behind it covers some 120 hectares.
  • The Palatine Chapel suffered the heaviest losses in the palace during Allied bombing in the Second World War.

Why it is worth it

The Royal Palace of Caserta was built to rival Versailles, and in sheer size it outdoes almost every royal house of the eighteenth century. Charles of Bourbon, king of Naples and later Charles III of Spain, wanted a new court and seat of government protected from attack by sea and away from crowded, restless Naples, and in 1752 work began to designs by Luigi Vanvitelli. The result is a single rectangular block with four inner courtyards, some 130,000 square metres of floor space over five floors, about 1,200 rooms, 1,742 windows and 34 staircases. The numbers matter less than the effect: the two arms that cross the block to form the courtyards give long, theatrical perspectives, and the whole building is set on the same axis as the park behind it.

Vanvitelli's Grand Staircase of Honour is the moment everyone remembers, a piece of stage design in marble meant to overwhelm anyone climbing towards the king. Beyond it lie the Palatine Chapel, modelled on the chapel at Versailles, a court theatre inspired by the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and a sequence of state rooms that culminate in the throne room. Their gilded, formal splendour made the palace an easy choice for film-makers: it stood in for Queen Amidala's palace on Naboo in the Star Wars films of 1999 and 2002.

The park is the real masterpiece. From the garden front a line of basins, fountains and cascades runs for about three kilometres uphill, the water stepping down past sculptural groups of Aeolus, Ceres, Venus and Adonis, and Diana and Actaeon, to the Grand Cascade, a 78-metre fall at the far end. All of it is fed by the Carolino Aqueduct, a 38-kilometre work by Vanvitelli inaugurated in 1762 and a monument in its own right. Off to one side, the English Garden laid out in the 1780s answers the geometry in the naturalistic manner of Capability Brown. The palace had one more historic role in 1945, when the surrender of German forces in Italy was signed here, and UNESCO inscribed it in 1997 together with the aqueduct and the San Leucio complex, where the Bourbons set up a silk manufactory.

Getting there

The palace stands in the centre of Caserta, about 35 km north of Naples. Caserta railway station lies directly opposite the main facade, built there so that the king could reach the palace easily, and trains run frequently from Naples. The nearest airport is Naples International Airport (NAP), about 21 km away.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Campania 29The Most Beautiful Places in Italy 279The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Buildings in Italy 5The Most Beautiful Buildings Seen on Screen in Italy 6The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Campania 7The Most Beautiful Palaces in Italy 9The Most Remarkable Museums in Italy 14The Most Beautiful Palaces Seen on Screen 15The Most Remarkable Museums Seen on Screen 19The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Italy 22The Most Beautiful Film Locations in Italy 22The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Museums 22The Most Beautiful Buildings in Italy 30The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Buildings 35The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Palaces 38The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses Seen on Screen 40The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Italy 44The Most Beautiful Buildings Seen on Screen 47The Most Beautiful Palaces 91The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 92The Most Remarkable Museums 93The Most Beautiful Film Locations 221The Most Beautiful Buildings 286The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 302The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

The Royal Palace of Caserta is a former royal palace in Caserta, Campania, 35 kilometres (22 mi) north of Naples in southern Italy, constructed by the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies as their main residence as Kings of Naples.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

41.07317, 14.32711per Wikidata