Description

Luigi Vanvitelli (1700–73) was an Italian architect and engineer, the son of Flemish-born painter Caspar van Wittel. Vanvitelli trained in Rome under the architect Niccolo Salvi, and designed churches and other structures in Rome, and in Ancona, in east-central Italy. He received a commission in 1751 to build a new royal palace at Caserta, just north of Naples for Charles VII, the Bourbon king of Naples and Sicily. Construction of this magnificent building began in 1752. It was one of the largest buildings erected in Europe in the 18th ...