Guided tour of the Royal Palace of Caserta, a Bourbon splendor

About this activity

The Royal Palace of Caserta Is a royal palace, with an immense park attached. It is the largest royal residence in the world by volume.

Visit with a guide the palace and gardens

This splendor, designed by the famous architect Luigi Vanvitelli, deserves to be visited with an experienced guide.

You will meet your guide at the ticket office: this is where your tour will begin. You will be able to discover the palace and its magnificent architecture already at the entrance, in fact you will be facing a royal staircase. From here you will have access to the various rooms, including the Royal Court Theater, the Palatine Chapel, and then moved on to the enchanting Royal Apartments, undisputed protagonists of the Palace.

You will be enchanted by the opulent furnishings, frescoes, and paintings as your guide tells you about the differences between the different rooms the corridors overlook.

Continue your visit with a stroll through the Royal Gardens: the pride of the park is definitely the fountains with their rich sculptural decoration. You will fall hopelessly in love with the sight of the "Waterway."

The royal complex: origins and characteristics

The historical owners were the Bourbons of Naples, although there was a brief period when the palace was inhabited by the Murat family.

The building is the last great achievement of Italian Baroque, completed in 1845, although it was already inhabited in 1780, it is a grandiose complex of 1200 rooms and 1742 windows.

In 1997 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with Vanvitelli's aqueduct and the San Leucio complex.

It is divided into four buildings facing as many inner courtyards and covers an area of about 47,000 m² on five floors. An imposing portico forms the ideal link with the Royal Park and the waterfall, scenically placed at the apex of the Italianate garden.

The Royal Apartments are accessed by crossing the Scalone d'onore, an invention of 18th-century scenic art. Opposite the compartment of the Scalone d'onore is the Palatine Chapel, inaugurated in the presence of Ferdinand IV on Christmas 1784. It is similar to the Chapel of the Palace of Versailles, but placed differently.

The Royal Palace of Caserta was desired by the King of Naples Charles of Bourbon, who had engaged in a kind of "cultural competition" with the French royalty. Desiring to endow Naples with facilities such that it could play a role as a European-level capital city, he decided to have a palace built that would rival that of Versailles in magnificence and grandeur.

The ruler turned to architect Luigi Vanvitelli, at that time engaged in restoration work on the Basilica of Loreto on behalf of the Papal States.

The king asked that the project include, in addition to the palace, the park and the arrangement of the surrounding urban area, with supply from a new aqueduct (Acquedotto Carolino). The new palace was to be a symbol of the new Bourbon state and to manifest power and grandeur, but also to be efficient and rational.

The Royal Crib

Among the various rooms you will also find the Royal Crib which is set up in the Elliptical Hall of the palace. The basic structure, called "The Cliff," is made of cork and occupies an area of 40 m². On this are placed 1,200 figures in accordance with the canonical scenes.

All the gardens of the Royal Palace of Caserta

Outside we find the palace park, which stretches three kilometers in length. At the center of the rear facade of the palace, two long parallel avenues depart between which are a series of striking fountains and waterfalls that connect the Italian garden at English garden.

The English garden is characterized by the apparent "natural" disorder of plants, streams, ponds, "ruins" according to the nascent fashion of the time, derived from recent Pompeian excavations.

At the end of the park towers the Great Waterfall.

Role-playing in the court of the Bourbons

For lovers of role-playing games it will be truly fascinating to visit one of the earliest examples of simulation, the Old Fishpond, which is located in the Italian Garden area.

Built in 1769 and commissioned by Ferdinand IV to dabble in small naval battles, along with the Castelluccia, before it was used as a home for outings, it was the center of mock land battles. It is a reservoir with a small island in the center, designed for the amusement of King Ferdinand IV, where mock land and sea battles with scaled-down ship models took place.

Interesting facts about the Royal Palace of Caserta

• When officials surveyed what was contained in the Palace in 1861, the bidet was inventoried as follows: "strange guitar-shaped object."
• In Caserta you can find Terrae Motus: this is a collection of contemporary art desired by Lucio Amelio and donated to the palace in 1994: it includes about seventy works by authors such as Joseph Beuys, Keith Haring, Anselm Kiefer, Andy Warhol and Italian artists.
• When the entire kingdom was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy in 1860, the palace was used occasionally for some members of the House of Savoy until Victor Emmanuel III ceded it to the Italian state in 1919.
• The Palatine Chapel, inspired by that of the Palace of Versailles; this space, was damaged during World War II, when the organs and all sacred furnishings were lost, and then restored.
• In 2019, the Palace hosted the archery competitions of the XXX Universiade. 

Accessibility

The Royal Palace is accessible to the handicapped (who in this regard enjoy free admission for themselves and any accompanying person).

In the case of a mobility impairment, the facility offers the aid of a wheelchair and the possibility of using the elevator that conveniently connects the entrance to the royal apartments. To use the service, information should be requested from the ticket office.

To reach the English garden, one can move by shuttle bus (upon payment of ticket also for handicapped persons); unfortunately, however, at the moment the buses are not equipped to allow wheelchairs to board.