Other pics from Naples...
These are from the Royal Palace and are the first batch...enjoy ;-)
The entrance...
These are from the Royal Palace and are the first batch...enjoy ;-)
The entrance...
Here' s a brief history of the Royal Palace of Naples:
The Royal
Palace of Naples was founded in the year 1600 by the viceroy Fernando di Castro
as a palace for the King of Spain. Lived in by Spanish and Austrian viceroys,
in 1734 it became the seat of the Kingdom of Naples with the creation of the
indipendent Kingdom by Charles of Bourbon and was the royal residence and
centre of Bourbon power from that year until 1860.
With the
Unification of Italy it became an outlying seat of the unified Kingdom and lived in
by the Savoias (Vittorio Emanuele III was born here) until 1946.
Given up
with the other royal palaces as state property in 1919, a part of it became the
National Library of Naples while the Rooms of the Historic Apartment on the
main floor, the oldest and more important for art and history, are a public museum.
The palace
was build by the achitect Domenico Fontana (born in Melide near Lucerne in 1543
and died in Naples in 1607).
Restorations
works and extensions were led by Ferdinando Sanfelice, Luigi Vanvitelli (who
blocked half of the arches of the façade portico creating various niches) and
Ferdinando Fuga.
A general
restoration of the Royal Palace was carried out between 1838 and 1858 on the
wishes of Ferdinando II of Bourbon by the architect Gaetano Genovese.
The main
monuments of art are, in the Royal Apartment, the cycles of frescoes from the
viceroy period, particularly the “Storie del Gran Capitano” (Stories of the
Great Captain) by Battistello Caracciolo and, from the first Bourbon age, the
vaulting of the first anti-chamber with “Allegoria delle virtù di Carlo e di
Maria Amalia di Sassonia” (Allegory of the virtues of Charles and Maria Amalia of Saxony) by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro
(1738).
Among the
more important works of decorative art is the precious altar in the Palatine
Chapel by Dioniso Lazzari (1674) in semi precious stones and gilded bronze.
The royal
stables in the moat toward Castelnuovo, the coach house and the 19th
century garden are among the other visitable areas.
Two images of the internal theatre
And some images of the first rooms of the Royal Apartment:
An astonishing "room"...
And now a marvelous tapestry...
And two obviously marvelous vases...
And a throne...
And some paintings...
Another tapestry...
And now a beautiful landscape...
And a nice clock...
