In my recent travel in Italy I had the chance to visit one of the most important landmarks of Italy, Caserta Royal Palace in Campagnia region, relatively close to Napoli.

The palace impresses from the first sight and some claim it is more beautiful than the Versailles. Well let me tell you a few facts about this wonderful palace which is also a UNESCO World Heritage monument.

Also known in Italian as Reggia di Caserta, the palace is the former royal residence in Caserta, constructed for the Bourbon kings of Naples. It was the largest palace and probably the largest building erected in Europe in the eighteenth century. The architect of this amazing building was Luigi Vanvitelli who worked closely with Charles VII of Naples, which in the end, never got to spend a night at the Reggia, as he resigned from the throne in 1759 to become King of Spain.

Caserta Palace has some 1,200 rooms, two dozen state apartments, and a royal theater modeled after the Theater San Carlo of Naples.

The population of Caserta Vecchia was shifted 10 kilometers to make it available to the new palace.

In 1945 the palace was the site of the signing of terms of the unconditional German surrender of forces in Italy, the first surrender of German forces of the war. The agreement covered between 600,000 and 900,000 soldiers along the Italian Front including troops in sections of Austria.

But no palace can exist without a garden. The garden, a typical example of the baroque extension of formal vistas, stretch for 120 ha. It is inspired by the park of Versailles, but it is commonly regarded as superior in beauty. The park starts from the back façade of the palace, flanking a long alley with artificial fountains and cascades.

The fountains and cascades, each filling a vasca (“basin”), with architecture and hydraulics by Luigi Vanvitelli at intervals along a wide straight canal that runs to the horizon, rivaled those at Peterhof outside St. Petersburg. Here you can admire “The Fountain of Diana and Actaeon” (sculptures by Paolo Persico, Brunelli, Pietro Solari), “The Fountain of Venus and Adonis” (1770-80), “The Fountain of the Dolphins” (1773-80), “The Fountain of Aeolus” and “The Fountain of Ceres” at the end of which you can see a big waterfall from the distance.

Today you can see the thousands of tourists walking along the alleys and the fountains, admiring the thousands of fish in the water which would you eat you alive if you were to fell inside . It is a common place for the italians to spend a day having a picnic, and have fun riding in a horse and cart, or riding bicycles.

There is also an English garden in the upper part designed in the 1780s by Carlo Vanvitelli and the London-trained plantsman-designer John Graefer.

On a more Hollywoodian scale Caserta Palace was used as the location for Queen Amidala’s Royal Palace on Naboo in the 1999 film Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and again in the 2002 film Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones as Queen Jamilla’s palace. The same room was also used in Mission Impossible III as Vatican City. In fact, the square where the Lamborghini is blown up is actually the square inside the Palace. The main staircase is also used in Angels & Demons (film) as the Vatican’s staircase.