Royal Palace of Caserta
UNESCO World Heritage Site (18th Century Royal Palace At Caserta With The Park, The Aqueduct Of Vanvitelli And The San Leucio Complex, Inscribed 1997) · Caserta, Campania
The Bourbons of Naples set out to beat Versailles and very nearly managed it. The palace at Caserta has something like twelve hundred rooms behind a facade a quarter of a kilometre long, and behind that a park with one straight axis of water running three kilometres uphill to a cascade, fed by an aqueduct its architect carried forty kilometres across the hills on arcades so grand that they are inscribed as part of the same World Heritage site. Inside, a double marble staircase climbs to royal apartments that run from full baroque through to austere neoclassical, along with a court theatre and a chapel copied from the French one. The park is the real event, its fountains stepping up the hillside in sequence and ending at Diana and Actaeon below the falls, with an English garden planted for a queen off to one side. It is an hour north of Naples by train and far too large to take at a stroll, which is exactly why there is a shuttle bus.
Via Douhet 2a, Caserta, Campania, 81100, Italy
ALL TIMES UNVERIFIED FOR THIS ROW. Broadly: the palace apartments open daily except Tuesday, from mid-morning with last admission well before closing, and the park keeps its own longer hours that shorten sharply in winter with the last entry a couple of hours before sunset. The fountains run on a published schedule rather than continuously. The Court Theatre opens irregularly. San Leucio and the aqueduct at Maddaloni keep separate hours entirely. Confirm all of this with the palace before travelling, and the fountain schedule in particular.
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