Royal Palace of Caserta

The Royal Palace of Caserta with the Campania Artecard

The Campania Artecard includes Caserta, and it covers Pompeii and Herculaneum too, so it’s worth having for a trip that takes in the ruins. You only need it for the adults; the other cards are on Naples Pass and Naples city passes.

With the card you go in by the main gate on Piazza Carlo di Borbone, not Corso Giannone, and collect your ticket at the Infopoint, with nothing to book. On free first Sundays, though, the card doesn’t put you ahead of anyone.

Royal Palace of Caserta tickets for the apartments, the park and a guided tour

Without a card, our ticket, at €35, covers the royal apartments and the park, with an audio guide on your phone, for a visit of about four hours. Like every ticket that includes the apartments, it has an entry time, and you can’t go in before it. You can cancel it up to 30 days before. Under-18s go in free, and on the ticket we sell they have their own option at checkout.

The same ticket with a return train from Naples costs €43, with the Napoli Centrale to Caserta tickets in the price. For the rooms with a person explaining them, the guided tour costs €38: two hours in the apartments, without the gardens, and it can be cancelled up to 24 hours before.

Once you leave the complex you can’t come back in, so see what you want before you walk out.

Royal Palace of Caserta opening hours: see the park first in winter

In November and December the park shuts long before the palace does. So book a morning entry time, walk the park first and leave the rooms for the afternoon.

The first Sunday of the month is free, with timed tickets released from 11:00 on the Monday before; that day the English Garden, the Gran Galleria and the court theatre close.

In the park, since 20 October the paths beside the rows of holm oaks on the Via d’Acqua have been closed, because of the risk of falling branches, and the park can close on very windy days, as it did on 23 September.

Inside, the 18th-century back rooms, the retrostanze, have been closed since 10 August, and when the palace is short of staff, part of the apartments’ route can close.

Getting to Caserta from Naples by train

The train is the simple way, because Caserta station stands right opposite the palace. Regional trains from Napoli Centrale take 36 to 50 minutes and cost €4.20, and high-speed Trenitalia and Italo trains stop there too.

From Naples airport, 26 kilometres away, and the port, 33 kilometres, there are direct buses as well as the train.

Inside the royal apartments of Caserta

The palace is built round four courtyards, linked by three entrance halls. The apartments include the New Apartments, the Throne Room and the rooms of King Ferdinand and Queen Carolina.

The Palatine Chapel, the court’s own church, has had works on its floor since 7 July. Because of them the way to the Gran Galleria has been moved; the Galleria has Archetipi, an exhibition by the photographer Antonio Biasiucci, until 30 November.

On Saturday and Sunday mornings the court theatre is open too, from 10:00 to 13:00, run by volunteers from the Touring Club Italiano.

The Royal Park, the Via d’Acqua and the English Garden

Behind the palace, everything runs along one axis: the palace, its portico, the Via d’Acqua and the cascade at the top, fed by the Carolino Aqueduct. Along the Via d’Acqua’s three kilometres stand the fountains of the Dolphins, of Aeolus, of Ceres, of Venus and Adonis, and of Diana and Actaeon. They’re being restored, with no end date announced, so don’t count on seeing them run.

It’s a long walk to the top, so the shuttle bus, the golf carts or a bike, all below, make the park quicker, and the Diana e Atteone restaurant, in the park, is there for a break.

UNESCO counts the English Garden among the largest and oldest landscape gardens in Europe. It has more than 200 plant species, a Bath of Venus, a cryptoporticus and the ruins of a Doric temple. The greenhouses of the gardener Johann Andreas Graefer have reopened, with the garden’s own hours.

Charles of Bourbon’s new capital at Caserta

Charles of Bourbon came to the throne of Naples in 1734, at 18. In 1750 he bought the estate of Caserta for 489,348.13 ducats, the currency of the kingdom, to build a new capital inland, not far from Naples, and he gave the job to the architect Luigi Vanvitelli. The first stone went in on 20 January 1752.

Since 1997 the palace and its park, the Carolino Aqueduct and the Belvedere of San Leucio, with its silk works, have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site together.