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CASERTA
The Palace, developed horizontally,
has a regular façade which seems to anticipate neo-classicism
choices and which is characterized by a huge, central arch,
surmounted by a fronton or pediment.
On the exterior, the
ground floor is decorated with ashlarwork, made from a high
plinth and a colossal arrangement of semi-columns and ionic
parastades on the upper floors. Four rectangular courtyards,
vast and luminous like squares and perfectly symmetric, are
spread out in the interior of the Royal Palace. Three octagonal
vestibules perfectly regulate the complex circulatory systems.
The Great Staircase of Honour, wide and scenographical, leads
to the octagonal vestibule from the noble floor (on which
the apartments and the decorated, neoclassic influenced, plastered
rooms open out, as well as to the Royal Chapel, which is similar
to that of Versailles, but more harmonious. In the interior
of the Royal Place, we can also see a small Court Theatre,
in an almost neoclassic style: a small treasure of its kind.
The construction of the Royal Palace, carried forward by Luigi
Vanvitelli until his death (1773), and then continued by his
son Carli, but not entirely completed in accordance with the
original project. The Park, also designed by Vanvitelli, is
the last grandiose example of garden-park, of the Baroque
era. Scenography of grasslands, false ruins, woods, avenues
which lead to the “Castelluccia” (miniature fortress,
constructed in 1769 for the amusement of the young King) and
to the ample sheet of water of the fish pond; but most of
all the scenography of fountains and falls, on which Vanitelli
based the Carolino aqueduct and the viaduct of the Ponti della
Valle, rational constructions of majestic monumentality.
In the building, which has 1,200 rooms and almost 2,000 windows,
you can find a picture-gallery and a museum in which a famous
collection of precious antique nativity cribs is preserved.
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