The Royal Palace, symbol of Caserta and Unesco World Heritage Site, is one of the most important monuments of the Italian artistic heritage.
It was designed in the eighteenth century by the architect Luigi Vanvitelli, according to the will of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon. The Reggia (Royal Palace) is a real masterpiece of architecture and decoration and it houses many works of art. While visiting its interior, it is amazing to look at the number of stucco works, bas-riliefs, paintings in fresco, sculptures, inlay floors that pass one after another.
Remarkable are the ones of Sala di Astrea (Astrea Room) and Sala del Trono (Throne Room), the biggest room within the royal apartments, that was used as a reception room for important personalities.
The Pinacoteca (picture-gallery) is organised as a series of connected rooms, it exposes numberless still life and war events' paintings and some Bourbon family portraits.
In the “old” apartment is exposed the Bourbounien crèche, which was the great passion of the family, from which the Neapolitan tradition of the Nativity preparation came from.
The palatine library is part of the apartments of the Queen, refined woman of great culture, the library is elegantly decorated with reliefs and painting in fresco like the one that reproduces the signs of the zodiac and the constellations, realised according to the drawings that Vanvitelli himself realised. The rooms dedicated to the four seasons are also very suggestive.
An integral part showing the majesty and beauty of the Reggia di Caserta (Royal Palace of Caserta) is the wonderful Park. It is a typical example of an Italian garden: wide lawns, squared flowerbeds and, most of all, a triumph of water games.
Along the central axis, basins, fountains and waterfalls, decorated with large sculptural groups, pass one after another. The result is a spectacular effect of great impact that reaches its peak in the Grande Cascata (Great Waterfall).
Beyond that, the English Garden enfolds itself, not as symmetrical as the Italian one, demanded by Maria Carolina d'Austria, full of indigenous and exotic plants, like the wonderful Cedars from Lebanon.