Reggia di Caserta - luxurious, striking with its size and decoration of the royal palace, located in the city of Caserta. Once the residence of the King of Naples, consisting of 1200 rooms, is the largest building in Europe. Its construction was caused not only by considerations of international prestige, but also the fact that the main royal residence on the shore of the Bay of Naples was an easy prey in the attack from the sea.

For the construction of Reggia di Caserta he was invited to the architect Luigi Vanvitelli, who took a sample of Paris Versailles and the Royal Palace in Madrid. Construction began in 1752, the year on the orders of King Charles VII of Naples, and lasted almost 30 years! At the same time the landscape was completely changed, and she was moved to Caserta 10 km. Interestingly, Charles VII himself not spent a single day in the palace, as in 1759, the year he abdicated. I do not see the completion of construction works and Vanvitelli - he died in 1773, the year, and in its place has been invited by his son, Carlo.

On the territory of the palace were built the church and the court theater (on the model of the Neapolitan San Carlo theater), but the plans for the construction of the university and the library have not been implemented. There remained only on paper and the draft 20-kilometer driveway. But around the Reggia di Caserta it was defeated a huge English garden - the largest in Italy (covering about 120 hectares). It stretches for 3, 2 km in length. Among its lawns and groves can be found fountains, sculptures, artificial ponds, a huge aqueduct Vanvitelli and even present the silk textiles to the houses of the workers, who are disguised as garden pavilions.

Reggia di Caserta is a rectangular building size 247h184 meters with four courtyards, each of which has an area of ​​nearly 4 million square meters Of the 1,200 rooms of the palace - 40 huge halls full frescoes. For comparison, in the halls of Versailles, only 22.

I must say that at the end of the 18th century, when the palace was completed, the fashion for Versailles was already past, and architects has been accused of extravagance and megalomania. However, in our time, in 1997, the year Reggia di Caserta was taken under protection as a World Cultural Heritage with the wording "the swan song of the spectacular art of the Baroque." On its territory is not just the shooting took Italian and Hollywood films, including such well-known as "Star Wars," "Mission Impossible", "The Da Vinci Code", "Angels and Demons."