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The
other Royal Palace built by King Charles was
that of Portici. In 1737, during a storm, the
royal couple had to stop in Portici ; Queen
Maria Amalia immediately liked the place and
the King had the idea of building there a royal
residence, which later became an official Royal
Palace. |
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The work began in 1738, under
the lead of Medrano first and then Antonio Canevari,
with a final intervention by Vanvitelli and
Fuga.
King Charles purchased the surrounding areas
to transform them into a park and he also purchased
the villas owned by the Earl of Palena and the
prince of Santobuono, that will be then included
into the new building.
In 1740 a decision was taken to extend the site
towards the sea by purchasing the wood owned
by the d'Aquino Caramanico family, the palace
of the Mascabruno family and the palace owned
by the prince of Elboeuf.
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The Royal Palace in a pictorial
representation of the 18th century |
It was long believed that the Palace
had been designed and realised on the base of the
preexisting villas purchased by king Charles. Today,
however, after a careful reading of the old design
proposals not accepted by the sovereign because to
realise them the royal road would have to be moved,
scholars find reasons for the peculiar building of
this royal palace not in architectural issues but
in political and social issues: King Charles wanted
to “experiment a new type of building which
had to embody outside the idea of a “benevolent
monarchy” that could make the people feel as
physically and materially closer to the sovereign”
(Barbera).
Originally designed as summer residence of the Court,
the Royal Palace then became royal residence and the
seat of the Herculaneum Museum wanted by King Charles
to exhibit the objects excavated at Herculaneum (and
therefore Portici became one of the destinations of
the Grand Tour).
Once the work completed in 1742, however, the Palace
showed to be not big enough to house the entire Court
and therefore many noble families purchased or built
villas in the surrounding neighbourhoods to be close
to the sovereigns and thus created the characteristic
artistic heritage present now in the area and known
as “Vesuvian Villas”.
The Palace has a superb facade with wide terraces
and balustrades, and it is formed by an upper part
and a lower part divided by a vast yard crossed by
the old “Royal Road of Calabria”, presently
called University Avenue.
The Royal Palace today |
The entrance hall leads to the first floor through
a magnificent staircase along which there are
statues coming from Herculaneum; also the floors
of some rooms were realised by using mosaics
coming from the excavations of Vesuvian cities.
At the first floor, we find the Hall of the
Guards and the Hall of the Throne, which still
have part of the original decorations; an office
in Louis XV style and an office in the Chinese
style both with floors from Herculaneum.
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Among the most precious realisations, we mention the
porcelain drawing room of Queen Maria Amalia, an extraordinary
example of the perfection achieved by the Royal Porcelain
Factory of Capodimonte: this drawing room is presently
exhibited at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples.
Also the wonderful baroque chapel keeps two red marble
columns used to realise the altar and coming from
the stage of the theatre in Herculaneum.
As for the Royal Palace of Caserta, here, too, the
park is one of the Palace wonders: it is an English-style
garden sloping down towards the sea, characterised
by long alleys. The Fountain of Mermaids is a remarkable
work of art, as well as the statue coming from an
excavation and representing “Victory”,
King Charles’ “Kiosk” with a mosaic
embodied in a table, the Fountain of Swans and the
statue of “Flora”, this one too coming
from an excavation; there is also an amphitheatre
with three orders of stairs.
Another interesting place is the area dedicated to
“ball games” or “fortification game”,
destined to house an ancient type of sport now disappeared,
similar to the Spanish pelota.
Beyond the garden, the wood stretched out, realised
according the typical attractions for court leisure:
a yard for ball games, a fortified square for military
exercises, a pheasant farm, etc. A zoo housing exotic
animals was added in 1742. The elephant given to King
Charles by Sultan Mahmud was put there and for this
animal a leaflet entitled “Dissertation of the
Elephant” was published in 1766.
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