Royal Palace of Portici

by Massimo Visone

Viewing the Vesuvian coastline from Naples, a large, wooded area emerges within the dense urbanisation: it is the park of the Royal Palace of Portici. The Royal Site, in its most complete form, stretched along a steep slope from Mount Vesuvius, with the Real Fagianeria (Royal Pheasantry), down to the sea, with the Bagno della Regina (Queen's Bath) at Granatello. With the arrival of Charles of Bourbon and the re-establishment of an independent kingdom (1734), conditions arose for interventions aimed at modernising Naples for its role as a European capital. The palace was part of the initiatives promoted by the young sovereign, who aspired to ensure that the residential heritage of the court could compete with that of the great European monarchies. After initial difficulties and the designation of Capodimonte as the location for the Farnese collection, the monarchs decided to build a palace in Portici. Legend has it that Charles and Maria Amalia made a fortunate landing at Granatello, where they were captivated by its charm and decided to build a residence there. However, it is more likely that what attracted the Bourbons were the discoveries of ancient Herculaneum (Ercolano) made by Prince d'Elboeuf. In 1738, work began on the palace, with the sovereigns overseeing archaeological excavations while residing at the villas of Palena and Santobono located uphill and downhill from the road. Despite the looming threat of Mount Vesuvius' eruption, they transitioned from the initial idea of renovating existing buildings to the development of a unified project, which included acquiring contiguous properties, thus bypassing the Calabrian Road. Initially, the king entrusted the work to Giovanni Antonio Medrano. Starting in 1741, Antonio Canevari worked on the palace, and from 1752, Luigi Vanvitelli was also involved. Vanvitelli made modifications to the aqueduct and contributed to the completion of Canevari's project, with the initial installations of Roman statuary in the upper palace still attributed to Canevari. From 1764, Ferdinando Fuga also worked in Portici on an expansion of the Herculaneum Museum located within and on the park. The building is divided into three main floors: the ground floor, the noble floor, and the second floor, with mezzanine levels in between. From the courtyard, which takes on the appearance and functions of a royal square, one can access the porticoed atrium of the lower palace, leading to the main staircase with two flights, adorned with frescoes (1743–1746) of faux perspectives by Vincenzo Re and Crescenzo La Gamba. Contemporary spaces include the Guard Room, where the ceiling depicts Truth Revealed by Time Witnesses the Triumph of Virtues and the Defeat of Vices, and the First Antechamber, featuring the Allegory of Dawn Dispelling the Darkness of Night. The result is a significant late Baroque architecture, thanks to its unique topographical location, altimetric differences, façade differentiations, and the variety of views, synthesising in one work the specificities of Vesuvian villas, including the presence of rooms frescoed with chinoiserie by Antonio Cipullo. The construction of the park appears equally articulated and resplendent with noteworthy details. A plan from the second half of the 18th century credits the Florentine gardener Francesco Geri with the initial botanical design but does not exclude potential collaboration with the architects involved in the project: first and foremost, Medrano and Canevari; Vanvitelli, Fuga, and Michele Aprea working respectively on the Boschetto (1759), the Gioco del Pallone (1764), and the Castello (1775), with a chapel and an observatory tower. In addition to the remaining wooded areas, there are several agricultural areas and other picturesque structures, such as the buildings of the Real Pagliaia and the Vaccheria, going towards the church of Santa Maria a Pugliano. In contrast to Capodimonte the layout in Portici does not exhibit a unified geometry. On the contrary, there is a disparity between the Bosco Inferiore (Lower Wood) and the Bosco Superiore (Upper Wood), and the same occurs within each of them. The project appears to adapt to pre-existing features and a different approach to planning. The adherence to the Versailles design shows a more subdued formal and dimensional interpretation, which will find its complete realization only in Caserta, where the interests of the royals are to converge. During the French decade, Queen Carolina Murat turned her attention to transforming the interiors to a neoclassical taste. Although this was to be an incomplete programme, traces of it remain in the frescoes of the Pompeian Room. In the Bosco Inferiore (Lower Wood), between 1814 and 1815, Vincenzo Paolotti and Giovanni Graefer transformed the meadow that connected the queen's apartment to the new Bagno al Granatello into an English-style garden with an artificial pond. In the 1820s, other renovations took place drew the attention of King Francesco I, who was a passionate agronomy enthusiast. These works included the creation of the Montagnola in the Mascabruno wood using soil from the excavation of Herculaneum. In the following years, the gardener Federico Dehnhardt worked on the formation of new avenues, and temporary architectural structures were added. In 1839, a gradual process of partitioning began with the partial cession of the hunting estate to Resina and the construction of the railway station at Granatello. The construction of the Napoli-Portici railway line further disrupted the continuity of the vast estate, with its upper boundary marked by the Vesuvian railway in 1904 and the highway to Pompeii in 1929. Meanwhile, in 1871, the royal palace was sold to the Province of Naples, with part of the lower park transformed into the Portici Municipal Villa. In 1872, the Royal Palace became the home of the Higher School of Agriculture, and even today, the Department of Agriculture is based in the most monumental part of the palace. It is distributed across the Royal Palace itself, the Upper Wood, and part of the Lower Wood, housing numerous research departments. Among the more recent developments, carried out by Pica Ciamarra Associati, it is worth noting the restoration and renovation of Palazzo Mascabruno (1980–1992), to adapt to the university’s need. In 2002, a virtuous recovery and redevelopment project was launched to bring together the scientific demands of the University of Naples Federico II and the Superintendency's need for knowledge, conservation and protection, with the aim of enhancing the heritage value of the palace and allowing users to enjoy the system of assets that have sedimented within it over time. The project comprises collaborations, the promotion of new museum forms and restorations such as that of the monumental horse-riding track (2021), which represents one of very few covered examples of such track, along with the one in Vienna. In 2009, the Herculanense Museum was opened, consisting of a multimedia reinterpretation of the museum founded in 1758 and housed in today's National Archaeological Museum since 1822. In 2011, the MUSA was established to underscore the history of the School of Agriculture. In addition to the Herculanense Museum, this museum complex in the making, which is one of the University's museum centres, includes the Botanical Garden (1872); the Botanical Museum Orazio Comes (1877), with its wealth of historical herbaria, 19th century watercolours and educational collections; the Entomology Museum Filippo Silvestri (1889); the Mineralogy Museum Antonio Parascandola (1990); the Museum of Agricultural Mechanics Carlo Santini, which has been collecting most of the Institute's machinery since the 1930s; the Anatomy/Zootechnology Museum Tito Manlio Bettini (1872); the collections of scientific instruments for agricultural chemistry, botany and topography; the historical libraries, the azimuthal-analemmatic sundial (2015) and the Museum of Art, Wine and Vine (2019).

From the volume "Passeggiando per la Federico II" (second updated edition) edited by Alessandro Castagnaro - photographs by Roberto Fellicò - FedOAPress