The Throne Room, Royal Palace of Caserta (Italy)

The magnificent Throne Room (Sala del Trono) was the very last to be completed in 1845, nearly a century since construction of the palace itself commenced (1751), during the reign of King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies at the Reggia di Caserta (Royal Palace of Caserta), Campania in southern Italy.

It measures 40m long and is located on the Royal Floor carved out under the direction of architect Gaetano Genovese in the final stages, with the fresco on the vault furnished by Gennaro Maldarelli, on the occasion of the Congress of Science, held in Naples that final year (1845).

Royal Palace of Caserta, Caserta (Italy)

The massive Royal Palace of Caserta (Reggia di Caserta in Italian) is situated in Caserta, capital of Campania in southern Italy, and makes the largest of its kind to have been constructed during the 18th century across Europe, the swansong of Baroque as it has been dubbed.

It further shapes the largest former royal residence as it served as the main quarters of the Kings of Naples, formally the Kingdom of Sicily at the time, that were part of the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon (France).

Construction of the palace started in 1751 under Dutch-Italian architect Luigi Vanvitelli on account of King Charles VII of Naples, who nonetheless never got to live there as he left to become King Charles III of Spain in 1759, and was only partially completed for the latter’s third son and heir Ferdinand IV of Naples.

It was largely modelled on its counterpart of the Versailles (France) intended to serve as both a royal court and administrative centre while placed in a location well-protected from a potential seaborne invasion as well as away from ever trouble-brewing Naples, with barracks of troops even accommodated within the palace.

The project took decades to complete and well beyond Vanvitelli’s own lifetime (died 1773), taken up by his son Carlo and then other architects in his wake, whose envisaging of the palace was never entirely fulfilled.

Today’s edifice bears a rectangular shape of a massive 247 x 190m in dimensions that comprises four sides interconnected by two orthogonal arms while it boasts no less than 1200 rooms, 56 staircases, 1026 fireplaces allocated between five storeys as well as a sizeable library and a theatre patterned on Naples’s historic Teatro San Carlo.

Out in the grounds, a picturesque large Baroque park stretches over around 11 acres beyond the back side of the palace, featuring a botanical English garden in the upper section, lining a long alley of fountains and cascades such as the Fountain of Diana and Actaeon or the Fountain of Venus and Adonis either side.

The palace made a filming location as the set for the Naboo Palace of Theed City in the movie “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” in 1998.

Schloss Belvedere, Vienna (Austria)

Schloss Belvedere is a historic building complex that comprises two Baroque palaces, the Upper (picture, north facade) and Lower Belvedere, the Orangery and the Palace Stables lying in the third district of Vienna, northeast Austria.

The construction of the complex started by around 1712 with the Lower (north) palace, described as the Lustschloss in its early days, and was concluded about eleven years later with the completion of the Upper (south) equivalent in 1723 under Austrian architect Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt, intended as a summer residence for Prince Eugene of Savoy.

All the same, the Upper Belvedere’s Sala Terrena presented serious structural issues that could even bring about a collapse so Hildebrandt was called in again to bolster it up by means of four Atlas pillars topped by a vaulted ceiling in winter 1732-1733.

The extensive Baroque garden’s layout, meanwhile, was substantially shaken up by French garden designer Dominique Girard between January and May 1717 so that it would be stepped up and completed by summer 1718.

It shaped up as a jardin à la française (French formal garden), bordered with clipped hedging around, that featured gravelled walks and Jeux d’eau (water games).

At the time, Vienna shaped the capital of the Holy Roman Empire and entertained the reigning Habsburg dynasty enjoying a building spree following the Prince’s, a Generalfeldmarschall (field marshal), successful military campaigns against the Ottoman Empire.

Today, the complex further houses the namesake museum while the Lower palace and the Orangery serve as exhibition halls.

The name ‘Belvedere’ is Italian spelling ‘Fair View’ though it could be Celtic in its deepest origins.

Glossary

Lustschloss: rendered as ‘maison de plaisance’ in French, it is a small country house or palace that served as a retreat for its owner, usually a local ruler, and was seasonally occupied.

Château de Versailles, Versailles (France), virtual tour