The Royal Palace of Caserta

Getting there

The Royal Palace has no car park for the public, and those arriving by motorhome leave it at a stopover: the Royal Palace itself recommends the area in the oasis of the San Silvestro Wood, on the hill, and from the area near the station you get there on foot.

• From the San Silvestro Wood stopover the operators take you to the Royal Palace with their shuttle, a quarter of an hour's drive, to be arranged on WhatsApp; from Feudo San Martino you walk, passing under the station tracks, in about ten minutes
• The main entrance is the central gate on piazza Carlo di Borbone, opposite the station: from here you enter the Apartments, the Park and the English Garden, and the lift for the Apartments is at this entrance
• The second entrance is on corso Giannone, along the side of the Park, and leads only to the Park and the English Garden: it is the only one through which you can enter with your own bicycle, and its ticket office, reopened from 1 October 2026, closes at 14:30 in November and December. The two entrances are a long way apart
• The underground car park of the Sottovia Carlo Vanvitelli, the closest to the entrance, does not belong to the Royal Palace and does not state its height limit: do not take the motorhome there

Practical information

Booking the ticket is not compulsory: you buy it at the ticket office or online. With the same ticket you cannot go out and come back in.

Contacts

Where it is

Caserta · Campania

You set off from

Notes

• Opening hours, read on 13 October 2026: the Royal Palace is closed on Tuesdays, 25 December and 1 January, although in recent years on those two days it has opened only the Apartments in the afternoon, with the Park closed. The Apartments are open all year from 8:30 to 19:15, with last entry at 18:15. The Park and the English Garden open at 8:30 and close at a different time every month, and the last entry is: in November at 14:30 for the Park and at 14:00 for the Garden; in December at 14:30 and 13:30; in January at 15:00 and 14:00; in February at 15:30 and 14:30; in March at 16:00 and 15:00; from April to September at 18:00 and 17:00; in October at 16:30 and 16:00. When staff are short, part of the Apartments may stay closed
• Tickets, with the 2026 price list: the Apartments with the Park and the English Garden 18 euros; the Park and the English Garden only 9 euros; the Apartments only 12 euros, but it is sold only when the Park is closed; in the evening, after 17:00, the Apartments 5 euros; the Park alone 3 euros, at the piazza Carlo di Borbone ticket office, when the English Garden has already closed. From 18 to 25 European Union citizens pay 2 euros, and under 18 entry is free, under 12 with an adult. Online you pay 1 euro more
• The winter day: the Park in the morning, because in December the last entry is at 14:30, and the Apartments in the afternoon. Inside you move freely from the Park to the palace, but anyone who goes out through the gate cannot come back in on the same ticket: lunch is eaten inside, at the little Diana e Atteone restaurant at the top of the Park, next to the shuttle terminus, or at the café at the entrance to the Park. In winter the restaurant's bar moves indoors. From 15 October 2026 there is also the bistro of the Giardino della Camelia in the Park
• The Park is long: three kilometres on a gentle climb from the palace to the waterfall, and as many to come back. The electric shuttle goes up along the Via d'Acqua and stops at the Dolphins Fountain, at the Fountain of Aeolus and at Diana and Actaeon: it costs 3 euros return, paid on board, and runs every opening day from 9:00 until the Park closes. At the entrance to the Park, on the palace side, bicycles can be hired, 5 euros an hour, 6 for electric ones; bicycles are not allowed into the English Garden. Golf carts with a driver cost from 10 to 15 euros, and the page does not say whether per person or per vehicle
• The fountains are being restored: the work on the fountains of the Via d'Acqua and of the English Garden, and on the new irrigation system, has been extended "until a date to be determined", and the Royal Palace does not say which pools are dry. In strong wind or bad weather the Park closes, as happened on 23 September 2026: in the morning check the notices page on the website. Since 10 August 2026 the eighteenth century back rooms have been closed, for lack of attendants
• On the first Sunday of the month entry is free, but with a ticket for a time slot, taken online from the Monday before or in the square in the morning while they last, and that day the English Garden, the Court Theatre, the Great Gallery and the Vanvitelli and Amelio rooms stay closed. With children, who never pay under eighteen anyway, another day is better
• The palace: from the main door on piazza Carlo di Borbone you enter the gallery with three aisles, the central one for carriages, which crosses the whole building and frames the Park all the way to the waterfall, and for this reason it is called the Cannocchiale, the telescope. Halfway along is the octagonal vestibule from which you see the four courtyards, and on the right the grand staircase: a hundred and sixteen steps of white marble, with the two lions at the end of the first flight. At the top are the Palatine Chapel, consecrated on Christmas Day 1784, and the Apartments: the Hall of Mars and the Hall of Astraea, from Murat's time, the Throne Room, thirty-five metres long and finished only in 1845, the apartment where Ferdinand and Maria Carolina lived, with the rooms of the seasons and the queen's bathroom, and the bedroom of Francis II with its four-poster bed
• The library and the nativity scene: the Palatine Library was wanted by Queen Maria Carolina, with about fourteen thousand volumes and frescoed rooms. From the last room you pass into the elliptical hall, where since 1988 there has been the royal nativity scene, remade on the model of the one Giovanni Cobianchi set up for the court in 1844: the Nativity, the caravan of the Georgians and the inn with shepherds at table in front of a plate of spaghetti. It can be seen all year, and at Christmas it is one more reason to come. On this nativity scene, on 5 December 2026 at 12:00, Opera Laboratori holds a tour for adults with the Cantata dei Pastori
• The Court Theatre, the only space that Luigi Vanvitelli finished completely, decoration included, opens on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 to 13:00, with last entry at 12:45, thanks to the volunteers of the Touring Club Italiano
• The Park: beyond the Margherita fountain, on the left, is the Bosco Vecchio, the Old Wood, with the Castelluccia, a little castle with a moat, and the Peschiera grande, the great fishpond, which Vanvitelli designed for Ferdinand to hold military exercises and naval battles with models there, and which soon became places of amusement for the court. Then the Via d'Acqua, one pool after another: the pool four hundred and seventy-five metres long that ends with the Dolphins Fountain, the Fountain of Aeolus, which remained unfinished, the Fountain of Ceres with the rivers of Sicily, that of Venus and Adonis, and at the top Diana and Actaeon: on the left the hunter whom Diana turns into a stag and whom his own dogs tear apart, on the right the goddess with her nymphs. Above it falls the Great Waterfall, seventy-eight metres high, from an artificial grotto where the water of the Carolino Aqueduct once arrived
• The English Garden opens to the right of Diana and Actaeon. Queen Maria Carolina wanted it on the advice of her sister Marie Antoinette and of the English ambassador William Hamilton, and entrusted it to John Andrew Graefer, who began work in 1786, travelled around the kingdom looking for plants and had others brought from Japan, China and Australia. It is one of the first English-style gardens in Italy: winding paths, the Bath of Venus with the statue of the goddess on the rock in front of a grotto, the Cryptoporticus, a fake Roman ruin with statues in the niches, and the lake with the Tempio Diruto, the ruined temple, finished in 1829 with pieces of columns brought from Pompeii and from Rome. It closes before the Park: in winter go up at once and start from here
• Until 30 November 2026 the Great Gallery hosts the exhibition "Archetipi" by the photographer Antonio Biasiucci, included in the Apartments ticket; no exhibition has been announced for the winter
• In the Palatine Chapel there is a concert almost every month, usually on Saturday or Sunday, and in the last two years there has been one on 26 December, and in 2025 another on the 28th: the calendar is on the Royal Palace's concerts page. On Sundays from 11:00 to 12:00 there is Mass in the chapel
• For walkers, Opera Laboratori organises the trek "Sulle Orme dei Borbone", in the footsteps of the Bourbons, about six kilometres in three hours through the Bosco Vecchio, the Via d'Acqua and the English Garden: the last one scheduled in 2026 is on 7 November at 9:30, for 20 euros, to be booked
• The audio guide is collected at the infopoint to the left of the piazza Carlo di Borbone entrance, leaving an ID document: 5 euros for the Apartments, 5 for the Park, 8 for both. Large rucksacks and umbrellas go to the cloakroom, and baby carrier backpacks are not allowed in the Apartments
• Children may recognise the staircase and the rooms: the Royal Palace was the set of two Star Wars films, Episode I and Episode II
• The mozzarella and the king's wine: since 2016 the Consortium of Mozzarella di Bufala Campana PDO has had its seat in the Regie Cavallerizze of the Royal Palace, but they are offices and cannot be visited. Ferdinand's wine, Pallagrello, has returned to the vineyard of the San Silvestro Wood, which cannot be reached from the Park: the oasis has its own entrance, the same as the motorhome stopover
• The ReggiaCard 2026, the one-year pass, costs 50 euros from 31 to 64, 35 from 18 to 30 and from 65 up, 80 for two people: for a single visit it is not worth it

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