Italy Guide
Campania
The Palazzo Reale
Opening time: daily except Wed 9am–7.30pm
Price: €4
The Palazzo Reale was thrown up hurriedly in 1602 to accommodate Philip III on a visit here and never actually occupied by a monarch long term. Indeed it's more of a monument to monarchies than monarchs, with the various dynasties that ruled Naples by proxy for so long represented in the niches of the facade, from Roger the Norman to Vittorio Emanuele II, taking in among others Alfonso I and a slightly comic Murat on the way.
Upstairs, by way of an impressive white marble double-staircase, the palace's first-floor rooms are decorated with fine Baroque excesses – gilded furniture, trompe l'oeil ceilings, great overbearing tapestries, impressive French Empire pieces and lots and lots of quite creditable seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings, including works by Guercino, Carraci and Titian, as well as Flemish old masters. The best bits are the little theatre – the first room on the right – which is refreshingly restrained after the rest of the palace, the vast ballroom; and the terrace, which gives good views over the port and the Castel Nuovo. Look in also on the chapel, on the far side of the central square, which has one of the city's biggest presepi, filled with mainly eighteenth-century figures – 210 in all.