Palace of Capodimonte

History

In 1738, King Charles VII of Naples and Sicily (later King Charles III of Spain) decided to build a hunting lodge on the Capodimonte hill. He then decided that he would instead build a grand palace, partly because his existing residence, the Palace of Portici, was too small to accommodate his court, and partly because he needed somewhere to house the fabulous Farnese Collection which he had inherited from his mother, Elisabetta Farnese, last descendant of the sovereign ducal family of Parma.

He commissioned Angelo Carasale, Giovanni Antonio Medrano and Antonio Canevari to build it. However, after Canevari failed to come up with a design for ten months, Medrano began his work. Medrano's design began construction in August 1738, but it was to take more than a century to complete, partly because of the difficulty of transporting piperno, the volcanic rock used, from the quarries in Pianura. Since all surviving drawings bear Giovanni Antonio Medrano’s signature, most scholars give him complete credit. Moreover, the façade bears little in common with Canevari’s oeuvre. Its sober articulation adheres more closely to Herrerian monuments in Spain and the output of the royal military engineer and architect Giovanni Antonio Medrano. Architectural borrowing was never neutral, and at Capodimonte such features harmonized the palace with other royal buildings, thus casting it as a member of a close-knit family of crown structures. The features drawn from Spain would seem to indicate that Medrano oversaw the design. He knew Spanish monuments well, renovated the Palazzo Reale, and designed the Teatro di San Carlo. Medrano probably designed the stairs, for their distinctive C-shape resemble the one he designed for the Teatro di San Carlo.

In 1758, the first part of the palace was opened and the art collection was brought in. In 1759, Ferdinand IV succeeded his father Charles and the following year he appointed the architect Ferdinando Fuga to oversee work on the palace and the grounds. In 1787, on the advice of Jacob Philipp Hackert, a laboratory for the restoration of paintings was created. …

Interior

The first and second floors house the National Gallery (Galleria Nazionale).

Elsewhere in the palace the royal apartments are furnished with antique 18th century furniture and a collection of porcelain and maiolica from the various royal residences. The famous Capodimonte Porcelain Factory was just adjacent to the palace; it was started in 1743 by the Bourbon King Charles.