Palace of Caserta

The Palace of Caserta, in Italian "Reggia di Caserta", is a former royal residence in Caserta, near Naples, constructed for the Borbone kings of Naples. It was the largest palace and probably the largest building erected in Europe in the XVIII century. In 1996, the Palace of Caserta was listed among the World Heritage Sites on the grounds that it was "the swan song of the spectacular art of the Baroque, from which it adopted all the features needed to create the illusions of multidirectional space". The kingdome of Naples was neither powerful nor prosperous when the Palace was built, and it has been unflatteringly described by the historian Edward Crankshaw as "a colossal monument to minuscule glory" and a reviewer of George Hersey, "Architecture, Poetry and Number in the Royal Palace at Caserta", found that "interpretive description is palsied by monotony, the principal quality of the palace and its garden.