At least the king wants to live decently...!


In 1735 the Spanish king's son Charles is crowned as Charles VII.



... King of Naples and Sicily...:



However, when the new ruler visits the capital of his new empire, Naples, he is "very not amused" - the city seems too narrow, dirty, noisy and shabby.

Now he can understand why in the past 230 years all rulers of Naples without exception avoided the city and ruled the country "from abroad".

But King Karl decides to do things differently:

In the port city of Caserta, 40 kilometers to the south, he finds a place from which he wants to make a new seat of government - similar to how Louis XIV gave up loud and dirty Paris in favor of the new palace city of Versailles.

Now the Kingdom of Naples may be significantly poorer than France, whose treasury was ruined for the construction of Versailles, but what does Charles VII care?

After all, you only live once - and your new home should be at least as big and magnificent as Versailles.

How nice that a fairly large piece of land belonging to Count Michelangelo Caetani di Sermoneta...



...can be confiscated for "offense against the Bourbons".

Karl - himself Bourbone - immediately gets his hands on it, hires the famous architect Luigi Vanvitelli and commissions him to create a home that suits his needs.

For the festive laying of the foundation stone on January 20, 1752, the monarch's birthday, two regiments and several squadrons of cavalry took up positions in the form of the floor plan of the new palace...:



Vanvitelli...



...designs a gigantic building with a rectangular floor plan with side lengths of 247 and 184 meters and a height of 38 meters.





It is broken through by two inner wings in the shape of a cross, giving the palace four large inner courtyards. Some of its walls are over 5.5 meters thick...:







Im Inneren des Schlosses gibt es Platz für mehr als 1200 beheizbare Räume, und die Fassaden sind von 1970 Fenstern durchbrochen.



The city and garden sides of the palace are emphasized with portals in the form of triumphal arches. An oval square is set in front of the city side, which should be framed by low side buildings.



These wings, which are reminiscent of the colonnades in the square in front of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, were only built half the length for cost reasons. Also for cost reasons, the original plan was deviated from, emphasizing the corner avant-corps with tower-like superstructures and erecting a dome over the cross-shaped central building.

The magnificent gardens - with an artificial water cascade! - were built - and have an area of more than 100 hectares!





Even inside, the best was just good enough...:







In terms of dimensions, the building really comes very close to the Palace of Versailles! There are 1,252 heated rooms (and another 600 rooms without a fireplace)....:



The roughest work lasted 20 years and cost 8,711,000 gold ducats! The already sad remnants of the Naples treasury were then tout perdú!

The brief "King" of Naples, Joaquim Murat, liked to live there, as his estate was far more magnificent than the Tuileries, where his lord, master, brother-in-law and patron Napoleon I resided..:



The gigantic palace was only really completely finished after 100 years!

And now comes the punch line:

Majesty very quickly lost interest in the new magnificent palace, he was there not a dozen times!

Charles became - as Carlos III. - King of Spain already in 1759 and as such he was ONLY allowed to rule Spain and nothing else!

So he went back to Madrid - and his son and successor Ferdinand, as well as today the Italian state, were allowed to bother with the expensive legacy that was always somewhere in need of renovation...