Royal Palace

Overview

Admire the Royal Palace without queueing up! When Naples is viewed from the sea one building in particular strikes the eye: the long pink and grey facade of the Royal Palace, decorated with the trellises of the hanging gardens on the first floor.

Tour details

Reservations must be made with a minimum of 1 day notice.
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Before making your reservation, please, read the Ordering Informations

IMPORTANT NOTICE: After succesfully completing a reservation, you will receive two e- mails: the copy of your order (immediately after submitting your order) and the confirmation mail (one working day after). In order to receive them, please make sure you insert your e-mail address correctly and check that your anti-spam filter or antivirus are not blocking mails from our address reservations@waf.it. Special attention for AOL mailbox users.

PLEASE NOTICE: Confirmed time is not always the same time you requested; museum automatically confirms the closest available time on the same date if requested time is sold out.

Open from Thursday to Tuesday from 9:00 to 20:00; closed on Wednesday, January 1st and December 25th. Cashier closes one hour before.

Audioguides available in Italian and English; duration1 hour and 10 minutes

Cancellation Policy:
For cancellations once a confirmation code has been assigned to the reservation, and for no shows, we can refund cost of unused tickets minus service fee (reservation fee and online booking fee).

Details

When Naples is viewed from the sea one building in particular strikes the eye: the long pink and grey facade of the Royal Palace, decorated with the trellises of the hanging gardens on the first floor. In the early 1600s the Spanish Viceroys of Naples decided to build a modern residence for themselves and for when the King of Spain came to visit: it was to open onto colonnades and loggias which would be spacious and finely decorated according to classical tastes: a far cry from the magical fortified castles where the Angevin and Aragonese kings had lived.

The site chosen for the palace was next to the Castelnuovo at the end of Via Toledo, towards the new residential area of Chiaia, south west of the original old city centre. Even today, the palace square, or Piazza Plebiscito, is one of the State's administrative centres in Naples. The headquarters of the Military Command in Southern Italy and the Head Offices of the Provincial Authorities both look onto this square.

The palace was designed and partly built by Domenico Fontana at the instigation of the Viceroy Ferdinando Ruiz de Castro, Count of Lemos and the vice-reine Caterina Zonica de Castro, according to a model dating from the late Renaissance; the architect had already experimented with this model in Rome in the work commissioned by Pope Sixtus V. The facade was built in brick and black Piperno stone and its size reflects the manneristic tendencies of the time while its decorative style is reminiscent of ancient Roman buildings, with its granite columns, Latin inscriptions, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian pediments and pilaster strips.

Inside, the palace is laid out around the square courtyard of honour which is surrounded by a colannade of Piperno stone arches; on the floor above this colannade there is a loggia, a covered arcade linking up all the rooms. Already present in Fontana's original design, and also included in the subsequent extensions by Sanfelice, Vanvitelli, Fuga and Gaetano Genovese, two other rectangular courtyards, the Belvedere Courtyard and the Coaches Courtyard, communicate with the courtyard of honour.

These create an interesting visual effect extending into the infinite, with aligned porches and repetition of architectural features. To the north lies the picturesque garden designed by the botanist Denhart in 1841 and built during the major restoration works that the Palace underwent in the 19th Century. The various shades of green created by magnolias, holm oaks and rare plants stand alongside the more recent and exotic palm trees.

The garden and the whole north-east face of the Palace with the Royal Theatre of San Carlo and the stables are surrounded by 19th century iron railings. The entrance to the old riding ground is dominated by the iron sculptures of two "horse trainers" by Clodt von Jurgenburg, a gift to King Ferdinand II of Bourbon from the Tzar of Russia in 1846; these form a sort of link with St. Petersburg as they are both replicas of two sculptures on a bridge over the river Neva.

The esplanade heading towards Mount Vesuvius is connected to the bastions of the Maschio Angioino castle by an arched bridge built by the Viceroys, and recalls the old link between the Palace and the Fortress with its artillery arsenal. In its early days of production the Bourbon porcelain factory was located in a nearby pavillion and the entire Palace used to buzz with activities related to court life such as: the Royal Print Works, the Royal Tapestry Factory which was later transferred from San Carlo alle Mortelle, the 17th Century Palatine Academy, the Royal Chapel, the Court Upholsterers, the Military Guard, the Head Butler's rooms and the staff quarters.

For three centuries from 1600 to 1946, the Royal Palace was the seat of the monarchy in Naples and Southern Italy, beginning with the early Spanish and Austrian Viceroys, followed by the Bourbon Kings and ending with the Savoy royal family. The Royal Palace has housed the Museum of the State Apartments and the National Library since 1919 and has thus taken on a different cultural role in city life.

Prices

Full price tickets; reduced and free tickets can only be gotten directly at museums and monuments in Naples

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