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).
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.
The prominent Rialto Bridge (Ponte di Rialto) shapes an architectural Renaissance jewel and the oldest of four bridges that span the Grand Canal linking the sestieri (districts) of San Marco and San Polo at the very heart of Venice, Venetia in northeast Italy.
It has been refurbished and rebuilt many times since the initial pontoon bridge in place under the name Ponte della Moneta by Lombard engineer Nicolò Barattieri, completed in 1181, as its significance rose on account of the adjacent Rialto Market (hence its current name) on the eastern bank of the canal.
The next stage was a wooden bridge completed in 1255 which comprised two ramps meeting at a movable central section, allowing the passage of ships below, but the need for a more solid structure soon arose as it was first burnt down during a revolt led by Venetian noble Bajamonte Tiepolo in 1310 and then twice collapsed in 1444 and 1524.
The present stone arched bridge came into being between 1588 and 1591 under Venetian architect and engineer Antonio la Ponte and his nephew Antonio Contino similar in design to its wooden predecessor as it comprises two ramps leading up to a central portico, having become a major tourist attraction in our days.
Monteriggioni is a medieval walled town, standing on a hillock, built by the Sienese (Republic of Siena) between 1214 and 1219 as a stronghold up front during their conflicts with the Republic of Florence so as to command the Via Cassia, a key Roman road.
It mainly served as a defensive fortification and held off many attacks by the forces of the Republic of Florence as well as those of the Bishop of Volterra.
Yet, when the Sienese assigned Giovannino Zeti, exiled from Florence at the time, in command of the town’s garrison in 1554 he betrayed their trust handing over the keys of the town to the forces of the Medicis, a well-known banking and political family of Florence.
The effectively oval walls measure roughly 570m in perimeter, built between 1213 and 1219, and feature twelve towers quite evenly spread around, with two opposite gates directly connected via the straight main street of the town.
Porta Fiorentina, as the name implies, faces north towards Florence and while Porta Romana, likewise, opens south in the direction of Rome.
Nowadays, Monteriggioni is a commune that falls within the bounds of the province of Siena in Tuscany, central north Italy.
PS Monteriggioni seems to mean ‘boundary (green) hillock’ out of ‘monte,’ from Latin ‘montem’ (mount, green hillock), and ‘riggioni,’ which looks like a likely Tuscan variation of ‘reggioni’ (of the boundary, potentially dated).
Breaking through History 