The palace has a rectangular plan, with two buildings at the two ends slightly more protruding than the central one. It has a length of one hundred and seventy meters by eighty-seven on the shorter side and a height of thirty meters distributed on two floors plus an attic. The external walls, plastered in Neapolitan red, are in neoclassical style with Doric influences, considered, in the eighteenth century, suitable for museum buildings.
They also have pilastersin gray piperno alternating with windows, balconies on the first floor, with a square shape on the second; on the ground floor, round arched portals that allow entry are added to the windows. Two of these are located at the ends of the central body, while another three, in succession, are located in the central part. The building develops around three courtyards and internally only some rooms on the first floor retain the furnishings of the palace, called the Royal Apartment, while the remaining rooms, as well as the second floor, originally used for servants, the attic and the mezzanine are intended for museum exhibitions; the ground floor, on the other hand, is reserved for the reception of museum visitors with various services such as ticket offices, cloakrooms, bookshops, cafes and auditoriums. A park extends around the palace.
Royal Apartment
The Royal Apartment, architecturally modified from its original and private aspect in part of the furnishings described in the inventories, has seen five Bourbon sovereigns alternate between its rooms, two French and the Dukes of Aosta.
The halls Bourbon
What remains of the apartment starts from room 23, i.e. the bedroom of Francesco I and Maria Isabella of Bourbon-Spain, also called Pompeian-painted Alcova, one of the most refined interiors of the nineteenth century whose original description is kept in an inventory from 1857. The room was built between 1829 and 1830 to a design by Antonio Niccolini, although the initial architecture was later altered by the opening of an entrance door where the alcove was with the bed, which however has not changed the brightness of the environment, restored thanks to a yellow wallpaper, made in San Leucio. The decorations on the walls are temperaand created by Gennaro Bisogno, Gennaro Maldarelli and Salvatore Giusti, with themes that reflect those of the frescoes found in the archaeological excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the floor is in ancient mosaics and the upholstery, such as the balcony door, even if partially lost, is made of silk, made by the Royal Factory of San Leucio based on a design by Niccolini himself. The environment is completed by a table with a chessboard, a tripod, three tables, respectively in hard stones, bronze and alabaster, and paintings such as Portraits of the family of Francesco I and Royal sites; from the window you can finally enjoy a panorama of the Gulf of Naples.
At the corner of the eastern side of the building is room 31, called the Salone della Culla as it held a cradle, then moved to the Royal Palace of Caserta, designed by Domenico Morelli and Ignazio Perricci donated by the people of Naples to Savoy for the birth of Vittorio Emanuele III in 1869. The room, also called the chickpea-colored Gran Galleria, has a marble floor found during the archaeological excavations of an imperial villa in Capri, precisely the villa Jovis, in 1788, and initially laid in the Villa Favorita in Resina and then transferred to the royal palace of Capodimonte in 1877. In the room various porcelain objects are exhibited, such as two clocks, while on the walls there are two landscapes painted by the French Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld and Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunouy, two paintings by Vincenzo Camuccini, including one entitled Ptolemy Philadelphus in the library of Alessandria, a tapestry by Pietro Duranti and a Gobelins fabric with scenes from the life of Don Quixote della Mancha.
Room 32 is dedicated to Carlo di Borbone: this is depicted together with his wife Maria Amalia of Saxony in the ovals of the ceiling, the work of the court painter Francesco Liani: always dedicated to the king several paintings depicting scenes from his life, such as a full-length painting, titled Portrait of Charles of Bourbon in hunter clothes, Antonio Sebastiani and Carlo di Borbone visiting the basilica of San Pietro and Carlo di Borbone visiting Pope Benedict XIV in the coffee house of Quirinale by Giovanni Paolo Pannini. The corner room in the shape of a porcelain basin and mirrors and statuettes are always adorned with the same material, in addition to English-made chairs and a wall table in wood, alabaster and terracotta.
Room 33 is dedicated to Ferdinand IV: in fact a painting is named after him, the first ever as king, portrayed at the age of eight, by Anton Raphael Mengs; in the room there are two carved wooden sedans, a wooden chest of drawers of English manufacture and paintings by Claude Joseph Vernet and Antonio Joli, in particular of the latter are Departure of Charles for Spain seen from the ground, Departure of Charles for Spain seen from the sea and Ferdinand IV on horseback with the court.
A vast representative environment is room 34; the idea of Ferdinando II, during the project of rearranging the interior of the palace, was to create in this environment a real gallery of portraits of the family: inside it, in addition to Neapolitan-made furniture, they find paintings such as Equestrian Portrait of Charles of Bourbon and Equestrian Portrait of Maria Amalia of Saxony by Francesco Liani and Portrait of Charles IV, King of Spain and Portrait of Maria Luisa of Parma by Francisco Goya and transferred to Naples by the second wife of Francis I, Maria Isabella of Spain.
Room 37, located near the Salone delle Feste, was intended to host banquets and refreshments during the parties held in the palace: the original furnishings include the wall tables, supported by sphinxes, a central table set up with a kit gilded bronze, the work of Righetti’s workshop, and with a service of French porcelain donated by Maria Carolina of Habsburg-Lorraine and surrounded by twelve chairs with armrests, made by Ferdinando II in 1838; on the walls several paintings with the Bourbon family theme such as Portrait of the family of Ferdinando IV by Angelika Kauffmann and Portrait of the family of Francesco I by Giuseppe Cammarano, and again View of Naples from Capodimonte by Antonio Joli and a tapestry with the Glory of the reign of Ferdinando IV and Maria Carolina, of Neapolitan manufacture of the eighteenth century.
Room 42, that is the Salone delle Feste, is one of the few rooms representing the noble floor to have remained intact; it was built in 1765 during the construction of the central wing of the building, originally designed to house the works of the Farnesian gallery and only at the beginning of the 19th century used for receptions and official court ceremonies. During the restoration works commissioned by Ferdinand II, the room was completed and decorated between 1835 and 1838 by Salvatore Giusti, pupil of Jakob Philipp Hackert, based on drawings by Antonio Niccolini, who will give a strong neoclassical imprint that can be found in the vault and walls with the use of pastel colors and themes that refer to Pompeian and Herculaneum painting; an environment similar to this was created on the opposite side of the building, but then modified, with the division into three rooms, following the museum conversion of the floor. The flooring is in Sicilian marble with inlays of white marble to form geometric designs, probably designed by Niccolini himself, while the mirrors and crystal chandeliers remain of the original furnishings, two sofas, although others were sold at the end of the 19th century to set up other representative palaces of the kingdom of Italy, and wall tables made in 1838 by the engraver Francesco Biangardi and the gilder Giuseppe De Paola, originally intended to the portrait gallery.
Room 43 has a fresco on the ceiling, Gloria by Alessandro Magno, made in the 18th century by Fedele Fischetti, originally in the Palazzo di Sangro di Casacalenda in Naples and transported to the palace in 1957 to better preserve it; the room also houses porcelain manufactures, such as the composition of the Chariot of Aurora, tapestries, various pieces of furniture made by real craftsmen and paintings by Hackert, Carlo Bonavia and Pierre-Jacques Volaire: of the latter Eruption of Vesuvius from Ponte della Maddalena, Nocturnes of the Gulf of Naples eView of the Solfatara.
In room 44 some musical instruments belonging to Ferdinand IV are preserved, such as two hurdy-gurdy, made by Jean Louvet in 1764 and 1780 respectively, and a guitar-lyre by Gaetano II Vinaccia; among the furnishings, a Biscuit clock that belonged to Maria Carolina, a tapestry depicting the munificence of David, various porcelains and an 18th century nativity scene, donated in 1895 by the Catello heirs, in terracotta, wood and cork, with terracotta shepherds with movable body in tow and fil iron.
In room 45 there is a frescoed ceiling, donated by the dukes of Balzo di Presenzano and originally inside the Casacalenda palace, depicting the history of Alessandro, by Fedele Fischetti, while the furniture comes from the palace of Carditello; a series of tapestries made by Pietro Duranti to a design by Odoardo Fischetti decorate the room, representing scenes from the life of Henry IV of France as the King receives Minister Sully in front of courtiers. The windows display objects of different materials and workmanship, a sign of a profitable exchange of gifts between the noble families of the time, such as jewelry boxes, boxes with secrets, vases, caskets and porcelain from the Neapolitan school made by Filippo Tagliolini.
Capodimonte National Museum
The National Museum of Capodimonte is a museum in Naples, Italy, located inside the eponymous palace in the Capodimonte area, which houses several ancient art galleries, one of contemporary art and an apartment historical.
It was officially opened as a museum in 1957, although the palace rooms have housed works of art since 1758. It predominantly preserves paintings, distributed mainly in the two main collections, the Farnese, which include some of the greatest names in Italian and international painting. such as Rafael, Tiziano, Parmigianino, Brueghel the Elder, El Greco, Ludovico Carracci or Guido Reni; and the Neapolitan Gallery, which is made up of works from churches in and around the city, transported to Capodimonte for security reasons after the suppression of religious orders, and features works by artists such as Simone Martini, Colantonio, Caravaggio, Ribera, Luca Giordano or Francesco Solimena. The contemporary art collection is also important, in which Vesuvius by Andy Warhol stands out.
The Capodimonte Museum boasts 47,000 works of art that form one of the largest and most complex collections of medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary art in the world. In 126 galleries spread across 151,000 square feet, works of the great artists are exhibited such as: Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Simone Martini, Giovanni Bellini, Colantonio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Jusepe de Ribera, Battistello, Luca Giordano, Mattia Preti, Francesco Solimena, the Carracci, Guido Reni, Lanfranco, Bruegel the Elder, and Van Dyck to name a few.
It all began with the Farnese Collection that Charles I of Bourbon, son of the King of Spain, inherited from his mother Elisabetta and took with him to Naples in 1735, with the desire to display it in this hilltop Palace. Construction of the Palace began in 1738, to function as a picture gallery and hunting lodge. Capodimonte is the only Italian museum that in addition to representing almost all the schools of early modern Italian art, can also boast works by contemporary artists such as Burri, Paolini, Bourgeois, Warhol, and Kiefer.
The Royal Park of Capodimonte, with its 300 acres and more than 400 plant species, is an unspoiled green space that overlooks the city and Gulf of Naples. Exotic species were planted here, including the first mandarin trees in Italy. It is the largest urban park in Italy, with roughly 1,500,000 visitors a year. Within the Royal Park you can admire the last baroque garden of sino-english design replete with rare oriental fragrances.
Majestically nestled within its Royal Park overlooking the Bay of Naples – Capodimonte offers a truly singular combination of artistic and natural beauty that is utterly unique throughout the world.