The Royal Palace of Caserta, Italy 

by Ihor Cap

In the mid-18^th century, Charles III of the Bourbons of Naples, a king so taken by the scenic splendor of Caserta, he decided to build Italy’s most enchanting Palace here. To bring the Monarch’s dream to fruition required the genius of a world famous architect, artist and poet. Only one person enjoyed these prerogatives at the time and he worked on the Basilica at Loreto for the Vatican.  His name was Luigi Vanvitelli, son of the Dutch view artist, Gaspard Van Wittel.  In the end, this gifted architect was “borrowed” with the Pope’s permission to design and oversee the development of the great rectangular Palace, garden-park, and the Carolina aqueduct that supply the falls and magnificent chain of descending fountains with basins in the Royal Park. Vanvitelli also provided the plans for the new city of Caserta.  A royal ceremony took place in 1752 to commemorate the laying of the first foundation stone.

Thus and so, the new city of Caserta grew in importance alongside the development of Italy’s most enchanting Palace. Luigi Vanvitelli died 21 years later and his son Carlo completed the remaining details. Today, Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, says the following about this Versailles-like residence (“Reggia”) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caserta ):

It is one of the most visited monuments in the country. Inside are more than 1200 rooms, decorated in various styles. It has been the set for several famous movies such as Star Wars and Mission Impossible III. The park is 2 miles (3.2 km) long and contains many waterfalls, lakes and gardens, as well as a very famous English garden.

As well, the new edition Caserta (undated) tourist guide has this to say about the Royal Staircase with its lions:

The 117 steps are carved in one single block of sedimentary stone of Trapani, and to their sides there are two enormous and wonderful marble lions; in the wall to their backs there are a door and more over a big niche with a statue of Tommaso Solari which represents the Royal Majesty with the Truth to his right and the Merit to his left.  Please wait for a few minutes for slide show to download.

Transportation

You can get to Caserta Nuova (New) by using the Italian railway network. The trains are affordable, reasonably quiet and comfortable.  They are also quite fast. We arrived to Caserta Nuova from Naples in less than one hour.

Once inside the Palace, you can decide whether you want to walk straight up to the top of the spectacular waterfall, take a horse and carriage up there or for only one Euro, take the tourist bus right up to the waterfall. We decided to hop on the bus the way up and enjoy the most enchanting 2-mile stretch walking back to the Royal Palace where once Kings and royalty frolicked about. 

So, when you are in Italy, do not miss the magnificent splendor of elegant rooms within the walls of the Palace of Caserta.  It is one of the finest examples of the Baroque era. Plus, if you get hungry and thirsty at the end of the day, you can always stop by the Palace cafeteria with the rest of the simpletons for drinks and snacks. 

MSN Live Search has a wonderful search feature to calculate distances between cities for any country in the world. (See  http://www.live.com/) I used it to arrive at the distances between various known Italian cities and Nuova itself. See Table 1 below.  I had to go to another useful site to convert between miles and kilometers and that offers dozens of quick links for other conversions too. (See http://www.onlineconversion.com/length.htm)

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Author: Ihor Cap

Source: http:articlesandblogs.ezreklama.com

Bibliography

Caserta The Royal Palace. The Paintings of the 800. The Great Waterfall. The English Garden. Old Caserta. (undated, new edition). Libri Completi. Proprita materiale e fotografie: Vincenzo Alfonsi - Edizioni Alfonsi - Tutti i dirittiper testi e foto riservati - Riproduzione anche parziale vietata.

Internet Bibliography

http://www.sitiunesco.it/index.phtml/?id=648

http://www.initalytoday.com/campania/caserta/cityguide2.htm

http://www.initalytoday.com/campania/caserta/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caserta