Reggia di Caserta

Following my Royal Bourbonic Pilgrimage we made plans to visit the Royal Palace of Caserta, which was built to rival the majestic palace of Versailles, France. Upon arriving I was disheartened by seeing that this incredible palace was.....abandoned in many ways. Nevertheless, the palace is beautiful. Let's take a tour of the grounds and the King's Apartement then see what you feel.

This Lime Tree Bower My Prison

Welcome to the King's Apartment

The royal crib

Royal Crib #2

The King's bed

Reggia Di Caserta once upon a time

The queen's bed

Her golden tub

And golden bidet

One of 24 libraries of the King

It felt empty and one of the side wings was totally empty and covered with graffiti.  This is not the way my fellow queens would live! I knew they would wrinkle their very fine royal noses if they new their palace had been overgrown with weeds and left to have an air of ghosts. Something wasn't right! Something was wrong here and I decided to look into what happened in history to leave Reggia di Caserta in an abandoned situation.

Once upon a time, King Charles III wasn't satisfied with his royal palace of Portici.

It was too small! So he built the Palace of Capodimonte. But this was not enough!

The Aquarius King couldn't be satisfied with these palaces with incredible architecture, hunting grounds, servants, pools and thermal baths. No, he wanted more!

So plans were made to make the most royal of all royal palaces. He hired an architect and planned to have the palace built with five floors, 1,200 bedrooms, 24 royal apartments and a theater modeled after the San Carlo theater of Naples. His loyal architect Luigi Vanvitelli organized the building of this magnificent palace. Most of the work was completed when King Charles III went back to Spain and abdicated the throne of Naples and gave it to his son Ferdinand I, who was less interested in building this spectacular palace than his dad was.

As a result, this palace passed down the hands of the Royal Bourbonic family and no one was as interested in completing it as Charles III had been. Finally, the architect died. People do die after all with time passing.

His son, Carlo, was to finish the palace but didn't have the funding for it. Aparently the original funding came from Spanish naval warfare stealing gold. And by the time Carlo, the architect was around, gold fueled warfare was a thing of the past. So two large wings on either side of the palace were left incomplete.

All of that to say that now I finally, finally understand why the Reggia of Casserta didn't live up to my expectations! Yes, it is bigger than the Reggia di Capodimonte. But it isn't better. Why not? No one actually lived in the Reggia di Casserta except for the servants! I would be a much better queen had I been around then. However, the queen at the time of these many castles being built wasn't exactly in a happy marriage. I guess when you get married at 12 things can go wrong in a few ways.

The good news is that despite the palace not being completed and it being relatively new (many palaces date back centuries so a 200 year old palace is "new") it has been used for many official events, for restoring peace during WWII (the Germans signed an agreement to stop bombing Itlay) and it was even used for Star Wars.

I still think it is a shame that the majority of the palace remains empty. It is glamorous and beautiful and with 90% of it being complete I feel that it should be turned into an academic university for horticulture or architecture or art! I know lots of people who would be overjoyed at living in the Reggia di Caserta.

And I would like to move in. Please and thank you.