Description of the attraction
Reggia di Caserta is a luxurious royal palace, striking in its size and decoration, located in the city of Caserta. Once this residence of the Neapolitan kings, consisting of 1200 rooms, was considered the largest building in Europe. Its construction was dictated not only by considerations of international prestige, but also by the fact that the main royal residence on the shores of the Gulf of Naples was an easy prey when attacked from the sea.
For the construction of Reggia di Caserta, the architect Luigi Vanvitelli was invited, who took the Paris Versailles and the Royal Palace in Madrid as a model. Construction began in 1752 by order of the King of Naples Charles VII and lasted nearly 30 years! At the same time, the surrounding landscape was completely changed, and Caserta itself was moved 10 km. Interestingly, Charles VII himself did not spend a day in the palace, since in 1759 he abdicated the throne. Nor did Vanvitelli see the completion of construction work - he died in 1773, and his son, Carlo, was invited to take his place.
On the territory of the palace, a church and a court theater were built (modeled on the Neapolitan theater of San Carlo), but plans for the construction of a university and a library were never realized. Remained only on paper and the project of a 20-kilometer driveway. But around Reggia di Caserta, a huge English garden was laid out - the largest in Italy (with an area of about 120 hectares). It stretches for 3.2 km in length. Among its lawns and groves you can find fountains, sculptures, artificial ponds, the colossal Vanvitelli aqueduct and even a real silk-spinning manufactory with workers' houses disguised as garden pavilions.
Reggia di Caserta is a rectangular building measuring 247x184 meters with four courtyards, each of which has an area of almost 4 thousand square meters. Of the 1200 rooms of the palace, 40 huge halls are completely painted with frescoes. For comparison, there are only 22 such halls in Versailles.
I must say that at the end of the 18th century, when the palace was completed, the fashion for Versailles was already in the past, and the architects were more than once accused of waste and gigantomania. However, already in our time, in 1997, Reggia di Caserta was taken under protection as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site with the wording “swan song of the spectacular art of the Baroque”. On its territory, more than once filming took place in Italian and Hollywood films, including such world famous as "Star Wars", "Mission Impossible", "The Da Vinci Code", "Angels and Demons".
