18th-Century Royal Palace at Caserta with the Park, the Aqueduct of Vanvitelli, and the San Leucio complex

In 1750, Charles III of Bourbon, King of Naples, entrusted architect Luigi Vanvitelli with the task of building a royal palace that could compete with the magnificence of the most powerful European kingdoms. A unique monumental complex was started, in which the Royal Palace and its Park were conceived as a urban project involving the whole Caserta area, starting a long process of transformation and modernization in terms of architecture and manufacture, since the new capital was to host the court and raise to the royal rang but also become a new vital urban centre. The Industrial complex of San Leucio and the Aqueduct Carolino by Vanvitelli, completed in 1769 and necessary to ensure water supply to the whole Caserta area, were at the edge of the project. A transformation process began that, since the mid-18^th century, continued for several tens of years, changing the appearance of a territory and a built-up area and establishing new manufacturing traditions.

The area of Caserta was chosen for several geoclimatical reasons such as the relative closeness to Naples – though far enough to leave behind the metropolis mess and the fear of dangers such as attacks from the sea or the Vesuvius activity – the pleasant landscape, the mildness of the climate and the fertile land; indeed, a pleasant place ideal to host the new capital of the Bourbon Kingdom. When Charles of Bourbon, King of Naples from 1734 to 1759, entrusted Luigi Vanvitelli with the project, he had several directions for his new royal architect. He was a lover of architecture – like his spouse Maria Amalia of Saxony, a lover of ancient art – as proved by the other two magnificent royal complexes that he wanted to be built in the Vesuvian area, i.e. the Royal Palace of Capodimonte in Naples and the Royal Palace of Portici. Since his childhood, he had the opportunity to visit or live in the most sumptuous real palaces in Europe: the Royal Palace of Granja de San Ildefonso in Madrid and the Escorial, the Royal Palace of Versailles, the Imperial Palace of Schönbrunn in Vienna, and the Royal Palace of Colorno in Parma. They can be considered the models that inspired the distinguished client. Charles III of Bourbon used to love the Roman classicist tradition of which Vanvitelli was a leading exponent as a reliable papal architect. Moreover, the project had to combine artificial spaces and natural spaces and, therefore, the palace had to be surrounded by a huge park and connected with the routes and the town growing around it. Vanvitelli followed the King’s directions and designed an extraordinary complex that is the perfect expression of 18^th century absolutism and the artistic traditions of the time. The Palace foundation stone was laid on 20 January 1752 and the site became a destination for the Italian Grand Tour even before the works were completed, surprising European aristocrats for its marvellous magnificence.  A rectangular plan was chosen for the Palace, with four courtyards or squares in it. The size is really impressive: the façade is 253 m long, while the side front is 202 m. The edifice features five storeys above the ground and the podium has ashlar stone blocks; the general appearance is majestic thanks to its neat and almost severe architecture due to the rigour of the elements and shapes recurring and alternating with regularity and symmetry. The interiors are characterized by sumptuous and plentiful decorative virtuosities; there are 1.217 rooms, among which the Sala del Trono, the Sala delle Quattro Stagioni, the Theatre, the Cappella di Corte and the Scalone Monumentale stand out. In front of the main façade is an elliptical square on axis with the new route to Naples. The same axis goes through the Royal Palace through a central porch along which the Park extends to the north in a perspective given by a series of long tanks with waterfalls sloping down up to the magnificent Diana and Actaeon fountain, dominated by a large waterfall. The fountain feeds the spectacular waterway and acts as the centre point of the whole complex.

The UNESCO Site includes also the Industrial complex of San Leucio, a rational small industrial village that was regulated by special Royal laws. Here, the 16^th century Palazzo del Belvedere was extended in 1778 by Ferdinand IV to host a silk factory; around it dwellings of working families, shops, a square and a school formed a tidy and productive small town that represented the dream of the Bourbon State. In San Leucio, Ferdinand IV wanted to create his ideal city, a productive and autonomous community – Ferdinandopoli – established by the sovereign himself, protected by the Crown and working as a prosperous manufacturing centre. The experience in San Leucio related to the principles of the social reform of the Enlightenment that considered the enlightened monarch’s actions as the historical force able to generate order and social wellbeing. The most interesting characteristic of San Leucio was that the Crown issued a special statute (1789) for the complex, promoting its development with a social assistance policy based on egalitarian and meritocratic principles. Handicraft silk processing was already common in the area, but the sovereign implemented a mechanized and methodical production system aimed at converting the village into a specialized manufacturing centre. In technical terms, it introduced innovative machinery, trained qualified young workers with apprenticeships in France and attracted specialized craftsmen from other parts of Italy. A real entrepreneurial processing plant opened including a silk mill, a spinning machine and an operative-administrative centre. The sovereign restored the monumental complex of Belvedere once owned by the Acquaviva family from Caserta. Besides the manufacturing premises, the urban project by Francesco Collencini included the building of dwellings equipped with drinking water and toilets. Moreover, the first male and female compulsory school was opened.

The Park covers an area of 120 hectares.  It is a combination between Italian Renaissance gardens and the gardens of Versailles. It is divided into two parts. The first one includes the Bosco Vecchio, an old Renaissance garden included in Vanvitelli’s project, the Grande Peschiera, where Ferdinand IV trained for naval battles and the Castelluccia, a building that reproduces a castle and was a pleasant resting place after hunting. The second part consists of a magnificent perspective given by a waterway formed by seven declining tanks, each one with a mythological subject (Fontana dei Tre Delfini, Fontana di Eolo, Fontana di Cerere, Fontana di Venere e Adone). The last and highest one is the Fountain of Diana and Actaeon, dominated by a waterfall with a drop of seventy metres from Mount Briano.

The Park included also an English landscape garden near the fountain of Diana. It was built by Carlo Vanvitelli, son of Luigi, to please Ferdinand IV’s wife. The English botanist John Andrew Graefer collaborated in setting out woods, hills, canals and stretches of water where rare species of plants were planted; the garden included also orangeries, greenhouses and small pavilions immersed in a spectacular setting.

The “Regio Acquedotto dell’Acqua Carolina” is a majestic work by Luigi Vanvitelli that contributed to the transformation of the Caserta landscape. It is 40 km long, originates at the sources of the Fizzo of Mount Taburno, a mountaintop of the Campania Apennines , and continues by conveying other sources that are abundant thanks to the calcareous soil of the area. The duct is 1.20 m wide and 1.30 m high, runs mostly underground and ensured a capacity of approximately 700 l/s. The route of the aqueduct is identifiable also thanks to the presence of ventilating towers with a square plan and a pyramid cover, placed at 1,500 m from each other and with the function of ventiducts and checking points. Reinforcing and drainage works were necessary in the initial part due to the presence of marshlands and also the building of bridges and tunnels sometimes represented a difficult for the works. The monumental and most spectacular section of the aqueduct designed by Luigi Vanvitelli is the Ponti or Archi della Valle, a viaduct running through the Valley of Maddaloni, the medieval feud purchased by Charles of Bourbon to complete the aqueduct. The viaduct is half a kilometre long and consists of three series of arches on different levels. The water runs on the highest level, which is covered also by a paved and passable route. Works started in 1753 and it took 17 years to inaugurate the whole structure. Water conveyed through the aqueduct fed mills and villages until reaching the tanks, the fountains and the fishpond of the Bourbon royal palace. The silk mills of San Leucio used the aqueduct water as the other settlements that became populated or flourished again thanks to its presence, improving farming and developing manufacturing. In order to build this unique work, Luigi Vanvitelli exploited technical skills and previous experiences in hydraulic engineering.

The final and triumphal fountain in the Royal Park consists of two groups of marble statues inspired by the myth of Diana and Actaeon and placed symmetrically on the sides of the central waterfall. The statues represent Actaeon who, while hunting in the wood of Megara, came across the goddess Diana bathing surrounded by nymphs. The goddess, angry for having been seen by mortal eyes, converted the young man into a deer that was torn by his own hounds to pieces. Diana is the symbol of the hunting vocation of the Caserta territory, which offered large wooden areas rich in game, and hunting was one of the most appreciated diversions of royal dynasties. Moreover, the cult of Diana was quite common in local tradition, as shown by the Romanesque Benedictine Abbey of Sant’Angelo in Formis (Naples) that was built over an ancient pagan sanctuary dedicated to Diana Tifatina. The statues were sculpted by several artists including Tommaso Solari, Paolo Persico, Angelo Brunelli, and Pietro Solari.

It is a precious masterpiece of the 18^th century Italian theatrical architecture. It was built in one of the halls of the Royal Palace, although the original design by Vanvitelli placed it in the Park, but the King wanted it to be built inside the Palace based on the San Carlo Theatre in Naples. With five tiers of boxes, the theatre was equipped with a perspective stage that could overlook – and therefore be visually prolonged into – the outside garden. The decorations are a triumph of the late-Baroque, with stuccoes, frescoes and sumptuous gilt.  It was inaugurated in 1769 with a sumptuous ceremony attended by King Ferdinand, Queen Maria Carolina and the Court.

His father Gaspar van Wittel (Amersfoort, 1653 – Rome, 1736), a Dutchman who Italianised his name as Gaspare Vanvitelli, was an important Baroque landscape painter in the Pope Court and initiated his son into the relationship between painting and architecture. Gaspar –a master of “city views” who partially influenced major Venetian landscape painters such as Canaletto and Guardi – trained his son in the perspective technique and the representation of architectural elements, passing on to him his exceptional sensitivity to urban landscapes.  At 17 years old, Luigi met Filippo Juvarra who was surprised by the painting mastery of the young man and advised him to devote himself only to it. Luigi never stopped admiring the prodigious work of Juvarra and considering him a reference. His training was deeply influenced also by his father who strengthened his versatility allowing him to be a gifted town planner, architect, hydraulic engineer, painter, stage designer and decorator at the same time. In Papal Rome, he was a pupil of Niccolò Salvi and even held the prestigious office of supervisor of the Fabric of Saint Peter. The long Roman stay working as a painter and architect for almost twenty years for the Vatican State ended in 1751 when Luigi moved to Naples. During his Roman stay, Luigi felt quite uneasy and moving from Rome was seen as the end of a period full of achievements but also frustration and grudge. Vanvitelli was a hard worker, with a strongly pragmatic attitude, though his sensitive nature suffered from court rivalry and, even after becoming a successful artist, he always lived the relationship with clients with the concern of losing their favour and disappointing their expectations. Vanvitelli died before the completion of his most important work; in 1759, Charles of Bourbon went back to Madrid and the works at the site of Palazzo Nuovo – as the Caserta Royal Palace was known at the time – slowed down. The project was completed by his son Carlo and his collaborators in the next century.

►“Gioisci pur Caserta e al Ciel dà lode…/

Te sol fra mille elesse/

Pel suo regal soggiorno/

Delle Sicile il Re…”

Crescenzio Esperti (XVIII secolo) (da E. Martucci, A.M. Romano, La città reale: Caserta, p. 33)

►  “La Regina à detto al Re: Quando ci sarà andato Vanvitelli voglio che ci facciamo una scorsa, e sul luogo vediamo tutto. Di più mi ha detto la Regina che vuole io faccia un disegno per la città di Caserta e le strade, perchè chi vi averà da fabbricare vi fabrichi con buona direzzione, nè più alto nè più basso, ma tutto con ordine. Il Re, vedendo la pianta del Giardino, che gli è piaciuto all’estremo, mi ha detto essersi ritrovata l’acqua in una grossezza di circa una piazza e più sempre perenne”.

Luigi Vanvitelli (1751) (da F. Strazzullo, Lettere di Luigi Vanvitelli della Biblioteca Palatina di Caserta, 3 voll., Galatina, 1976)

Scenic effects, boldness and monumentality are the characteristics of the complex of the Royal Palace at Caserta, which was part of an artistic and architectural phenomenon that took place in the other great Italian cities for royal and papal clients. Between the 17^th and the 18^th century, new squares and palaces were built in many Italian cities with majestic scenic effects to give magnificence to urban spaces used for splendid parades, march-pasts and religious ceremonies. The ruling classes invested considerable capitals to obtain a monumental frame for their power: staircases, squares, fountains, terraces, open galleries, wide avenues with gardens and water effects became the new architectural “wings” of power. The Baroque style could fulfil the sumptuous tastes of aristocrats thanks to its theatricality and triumphalism culminating in perspective scenarios. Exceptional monumental complexes were built in Rome, such as the Colonnade of Saint Peter’s Square by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1657-1667), the Stairway of Trinità dei Monti by Francesco De Sanctis (1721-26) and the Trevi Fountain (1733). In Turin, Filippo Juvarra created wonders and marvels for the Royal House of Savoy, such as the Royal Hunting Lodge of Stupinigi (1730) and Venaria Reale, two palaces whose monumental part is open and designed in harmony with the gardens and the geometries of the complex paths. In Naples, the Bourbon dynasty built the Royal Palace of Capodimonte and the Royal Palace of Portici (1738), the summer residence of the court at the feet of the Vesuvius, with paths, fountains, English landscape gardens and woods that still constitute an immense park in an excellent state of preservation.

A link can found between the Caserta Site and the Site of Crespi d’Adda. San Leucio was one of the first modern experiences of production organization in Europe, with some analogies with the model of the mill town of Crespi d’Adda, in spite of their specific contextual and chronological features. One of the aspects in common between the two experiences was the paternalistic role played by a charismatic figure – political, institutional or economic – who conceived a project for the development of a settlement and implemented it based on unitary aesthetic criteria and rational order principles. Another common element was the conviction that the care for the daily aspects of the life of workers and their wellbeing were fundamental for the functioning of the social and productive body. Comparing the two Sites allows to identify the birth, changes and applications of some of the founding concepts of Modernity, such as the idea of progress and the role played by the ruling class with reference to the working class.

Carlo Vanvitelli, a c. di B. Gravagnuolo, Guida, 2008

Casa di re: la Reggia di Caserta fra storia e tutela, a c. di R. Cioffi, G. Petrenga, Skira, Milano, 2005

Il giardino inglese della Reggia di Caserta, a c. di F. Canestrini, M.R. Iacono, Electa, Napoli, 2004

Luigi Vanvitelli, a c. di C. de Seta, Electa, Napoli, 1998

Manoscritti di Luigi Vanvitelli nell’archivio della Reggia di Caserta 1752-1773, a c. di A. Gianfrotta, Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, Roma, 2000

F. Capano, Caserta. La città dei Borbone oltre la reggia (1750-1860), Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 2012

G. Chierici, La Reggia di Caserta, Ist. Poligrafico dello Stato, Roma, 1999

S. Costanzo, La scuola del Vanvitelli. Dai primi collaboratori del maestro all’opera dei suoi seguaci, Clean, 2006

G. Cundari, G.M. Bagordo, L’ acquedotto Carolino, Aracne, 2012

P. Della Corte, M.G. Quaranta, Caserta. La Reggia e il parco, il belvedere di San Leucio, l’acquedotto carolino, Ist. Poligrafico dello Stato, Roma, 2005

S. Fiorenza, Nel giardino inglese della Reggia di Caserta. Storia, struttura, simbologia, Pontecorboli, 2016

A. Gentile, Caserta nei ricordi dei viaggiatori stranieri, Napoli, 1980

E. Martucci, A.M. Romano, La città reale: Caserta, Guida, 1993

R. Serraglio, Il «Regio acquidotto» dell’acqua carolina di Caserta, La Scuola di Pitagora, 2012

whc.unesco.org/en/list/549

www.unesco.beniculturali.it

www.reggiadicaserta.beniculturali.it/

In 1750, Charles III of Bourbon, King of Naples, entrusted architect Luigi Vanvitelli with the task of building a royal palace that could compete with the magnificence of the most powerful European kingdoms. A unique monumental complex was started, in which the Royal Palace and its Park were integrated into a urban project involving the whole Caserta area, starting a long process of transformation and modernization in terms of architecture and manufacture, since the new capital was to host the court and raise to the royal rang but also become a new vital urban centre. The Real Colonia di San Leucio and the Aqueduct Carolino by Vanvitelli, completed in 1769 and necessary to ensure water supply to the whole Caserta area, were at the edge of the project. A transformation process began that, since the mid-18^th century, continued for several tens of years, changing the appearance of a territory and a built-up area and establishing new manufacturing traditions.

The area of Caserta was chosen for several reasons: the relative closeness to Naples – though far enough to leave behind the metropolis mess and the danger of attacks from the sea or the Vesuvius activity – the pleasant landscape, the mildness of the climate and the fertile land; indeed, a very pleasant place ideal to host the new capital of the Bourbon Kingdom. When Charles of Bourbon, King of Naples from 1734 to 1759, entrusted Luigi Vanvitelli with the project, he had several directions for the new royal architect. The king was a lover of architecture and since his childhood he had the opportunity to visit or live in the most sumptuous real palaces in Europe: the Royal Palace of Granja de San Ildefonso in Madrid and the Escorial, the Royal Palace of Versailles, the Imperial Palace of Schönbrunn in Vienna and the Royal Palace of Colorno in Parma, which were the models that inspired the distinguished client. The project had to combine artificial spaces and natural spaces and, therefore, the palace had to be surrounded by a huge park and connected with the routes and the town growing around it. Vanvitelli followed the King’s directions and designed an extraordinary complex. The Palace foundation stone was laid on 20 January 1752. A rectangular plan was chosen for the Palace, with four courtyards or squares in it. The size is really impressive: the façade is 253 m long, while the side front is 202 m. The edifice features five storeys and the podium has ashlar stone blocks; the general appearance is majestic thanks to its neat and almost severe architecture due to the rigour of the elements and shapes recurring and alternating with regularity and symmetry. The interiors are characterized by sumptuous and plentiful decorative virtuosities; there are 1.217 rooms, among which the Sala del Trono, the Sala delle Quattro Stagioni, the Theatre, the Cappella di Corte and the Scalone Monumentale stand out. In front of the main façade is an elliptical square on axis with the new route to Naples. The same axis goes through the Royal Palace through a central porch along which the Park extends to the north in a perspective given by a series of long tanks with waterfalls sloping down up to the magnificent Diana and Actaeon fountain, dominated by a large waterfall; the fountain feeds the spectacular waterway and acts as the centre point of the whole complex.

The UNESCO Site includes also the Real Colonia di San Leucio, a rational small industrial village that was regulated by special Royal laws. Here, the 16^th century Palazzo del Belvedere was extended in 1778 by Ferdinand IV to host a silk factory; around it dwellings of working families, shops, a square and a school formed a tidy and productive small town that represented the dream of the Bourbon State. In San Leucio, Ferdinand IV wanted to create his ideal city, a productive and autonomous community – Ferdinandopoli – established by the sovereign himself, protected by the Crown and working as a prosperous manufacturing centre. The experience in San Leucio related to the principles of the social reform of the Enlightenment that considered the enlightened monarch’s actions as the historical force able to generate order and social wellbeing. The most interesting characteristic of San Leucio was that the Crown issued a special statute (1789) for the complex, promoting its development with a social assistance policy based on egalitarian and meritocratic principles and some gender equality. Handicraft silk processing was already common in the area, but the sovereign implemented a mechanized and methodical production system aimed at converting the village into a specialized manufacturing centre. In technical terms, it introduced innovative machinery, trained qualified young workers and attracted specialized craftsmen from other parts of Italy. A real entrepreneurial processing plant opened including a silk mill, a spinning machine and an operative-administrative centre. The sovereign restored the monumental complex of Belvedere once owned by the Acquaviva family from Caserta. Besides the manufacturing premises, the urban project by Francesco Collencini included the building of dwellings equipped with drinking water and toilets. Moreover, the first male and female compulsory school was opened.

The Park covers an area of 120 hectares.  It is a combination between Italian Renaissance gardens and the gardens of Versailles. It is divided into two parts. The first one includes: the Bosco Vecchio, an old Renaissance garden included in Vanvitelli’s project, the Grande Peschiera, where Ferdinand IV trained for naval battles and the Castelluccia, a building that reproduces a castle and was a pleasant resting place after hunting. The second part consists of a magnificent perspective given by a waterway formed by seven declining tanks, each one with a mythological subject (Fontana dei Tre Delfini, Fontana di Eolo, Fontana di Cerere, Fontana di Venere e Adone). The last and highest one is the Fountain of Diana and Actaeon, dominated by a waterfall with a drop of seventy metres from Mount Briano.  The Park included also an English landscape garden near the fountain of Diana. It was built by Carlo Vanvitelli, son of Luigi. The English botanist John Andrew Graefer collaborated in setting out woods, hills, canals and stretches of water where rare species of plants were planted; the garden included also orangeries, greenhouses and small pavilions immersed in a spectacular setting.

The “Regio Acquedotto dell’Acqua Carolina” is a majestic work by Luigi Vanvitelli that contributed to the transformation of the Caserta landscape. It is 40 km long, originates at the sources of the Fizzo of Mount Taburno, a mountaintop of the Campania Apennines , and continues by conveying other sources that are abundant thanks to the calcareous soil of the area. The duct is 1.20 m wide and 1.30 m high, runs mostly underground and ensured a capacity of approximately 700 l/s. The route of the aqueduct is identifiable also thanks to the presence of ventilating towers with a square plan and a pyramid cover, placed at 1,500 m from each other and with the function of ventiducts and checking points. Reinforcing and drainage works were necessary in the initial part and also the building of bridges and tunnels sometimes represented a difficult for the works. The monumental and most spectacular section of the aqueduct designed by Luigi Vanvitelli is the Ponti or Archi della Valle, a viaduct running through the Valley of Maddaloni, the medieval feud purchased by Charles of Bourbon to complete the aqueduct. The viaduct is half a kilometre long and consists of three series of arches on different levels. The water runs on the highest level, which is covered also by a paved and passable route. Works started in 1753 and it took 17 years to inaugurate the whole structure. Water conveyed through the aqueduct fed mills and villages until reaching the tanks, the fountains and the fishpond of the Bourbon royal palace.

The final and triumphal fountain in the Royal Park consists of two groups of marble statues inspired by the myth of Diana and Actaeon and placed symmetrically on the sides of the central waterfall. The statues represent Actaeon who, while hunting in the wood of Megara, came across the goddess Diana bathing surrounded by nymphs. The goddess, angry for having been seen by mortal eyes, converted the young man into a deer that was torn by his own hounds to pieces. Diana is the symbol of the hunting vocation of the Caserta territory, which offered large wooden areas rich in game, and hunting was one of the most appreciated diversions of royal dynasties.

It is a precious masterpiece of the 18^th century Italian theatrical architecture. It was built in one of the halls of the Royal Palace, although the original design by Vanvitelli placed it in the Park, but the King wanted it to be built inside the Palace based on the San Carlo Theatre in Naples. With five tiers of boxes, the theatre was equipped with a perspective stage that could overlook – and therefore be visually prolonged into – the outside garden. The decorations are a triumph of the late-Baroque, with stuccoes, frescoes and sumptuous gilt. It was inaugurated in 1769 with a sumptuous ceremony.

His father Gaspar van Wittel (Amersfoort, 1653 – Rome, 1736), a Dutchman who Italianised his name as Gaspare Vanvitelli, was an important Baroque landscape painter in the Pope Court and initiated his son into the relationship between painting and architecture. At 17 years old, Luigi met Filippo Juvarra and never stopped admiring his prodigious work and considering him a reference. His training was deeply influenced also by his father, who strengthened his versatility allowing him to be a gifted town planner, architect, hydraulic engineer, painter, stage designer and decorator at the same time. In Papal Rome, he even held the prestigious office of supervisor of the Fabric of Saint Peter. The long Roman stay working as a painter and architect for almost twenty years for the Vatican State ended in 1751 when Luigi moved to Naples. Vanvitelli was a hard worker, with a strongly pragmatic attitude, though his sensitive nature suffered from court rivalry and, even after becoming a successful artist, he always lived the relationship with clients with the concern of losing their favour and disappointing their expectations. Vanvitelli died before the completion of his most important work; in 1759, Charles of Bourbon went back to Madrid and the works at the site of Palazzo Nuovo – as the Caserta Royal Palace was known at the time – slowed down. The project was completed by his son Carlo and his collaborators in the next century.

Scenic effects, boldness and monumentality are the characteristics of the complex of the Royal Palace at Caserta, which was part of an artistic and architectural phenomenon that took place in the other great Italian cities for royal and papal clients. Between the 17^th and the 18^th century, new squares and palaces were built in many Italian cities with majestic scenic effects to give magnificence to urban spaces used for splendid parades, march-pasts and religious ceremonies. The ruling classes invested considerable capitals to obtain a monumental frame for their power: staircases, squares, fountains, terraces, open galleries, wide avenues with gardens and water effects became the new architectural “wings” of power. The Baroque style could fulfil the sumptuous tastes of aristocrats thanks to its theatricality and triumphalism culminating in perspective scenarios. Exceptional monumental complexes were built in Rome, such as the Colonnade of Saint Peter’s Square by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1657-1667), the Stairway of Trinità dei Monti by Francesco De Sanctis (1721-26) and the Trevi Fountain (1733). In Turin, Filippo Juvarra created wonders and marvels for the Royal House of Savoy, such as the Royal Hunting Lodge of Stupinigi (1730) and Venaria Reale, two palaces whose monumental part is open and designed in harmony with the gardens and the geometries of the complex paths. In Naples, the Bourbon dynasty built the Royal Palace of Capodimonte and the Royal Palace of Portici (1738), the summer residence of the court at the feet of the Vesuvius, with paths, fountains, English landscape gardens and woods that still constitute an immense park in an excellent state of preservation.

A link can found between the Caserta Site and the Site of Crespi d’Adda. San Leucio was one of the first modern experiences of production organization in Europe, with some analogies with the model of the mill town of Crespi d’Adda, in spite of their specific contextual and chronological features. One of the aspects in common between the two experiences was the paternalistic role played by a charismatic figure – political, institutional or economic – who conceived a project for the development of a settlement and implemented it based on unitary aesthetic criteria and rational order principles. Another common element was the conviction that the care for the daily aspects of the life of workers and their wellbeing were fundamental for the functioning of the social and productive body. Comparing the two Sites allows to identify the birth, changes and applications of some of the founding concepts of Modernity, such as the idea of progress and the role played by the ruling class with reference to the working class.

Absolutism, term related to the Latin expression legibus solutus, “released by law”, i.e. “free” and “independent from laws”. Absolutism is the State political form established in Europe since the 16^th century and culminated in the 18^th century. According to absolutism, sovereignty is in the hands of the king, who has absolute powers and is above the laws, since he is the source of law and social and political order.

Ideological, related to ideology, which is the set of values, convictions and principles belonging to a collective social subject, e.g. bourgeois ideology.

Modernization, in sociological analysis, a historical, political, cultural and economic process that have affected western societies since the 18^th century. The principles on which most theories on modernity are based are rationality, bureaucratic state organization and democratic political form.

Supply, provision

Manufacturing, related to manufacture: set of manual or mechanized activities aimed at production. Factory, plant, mill, works.

Very pleasant, superlative of pleasant, fine, charming, likeable.

Meritocratic, based on individual merit and personal qualities for the granting of charges and honours.

Gender equality, expression that means equality and same dignity between the male and the female gender.

Workers, the personnel of a firm, a site or a project. Specialized workers working at the same production site.

Landscape painter, a painter specialized in landscapes, i.e. panoramic views.

Pragmatic, Realistic, related to and keeping with experience.

Hunting, related to hunting.