The Royal Palace, open to the public, today has various diverse functions: in particular, it is the seat of the National Neapolitan Library, dating back to 1925, and of a museum structure, The Historical Apartment, in which visitors can see the original furnishings of the nobility.
The construction of the Palace began in the 1600’s, on the wishes of Filippo III and subsequently on those of the viceroy, Ferdinando di Castro, the Count of Lemos and Caterina Zunica, his wife, who entrusted the construction to one of the most famous architects of the time, Domenico Fontana. Work continued with the subsequent viceroy, Francesco di Castro, and continued until past that mid century with the addition of The Chapel, on the eastern side and the monumental, symmetrical great staircase in 1651. The Palace, beginning from the late Renaissance academic façade, developed around the courtyard in the form of a square with a superior loggia. It extended through a walkway of the Royal Palace to the garrison of Castelnuovo, and then opened into Via Chiaia and Toledo, from the side of the façade. The iconographic fonts testify that the Palace was utilised as a military exercise camp, for ritual ceremonies and celebrations.
The artistic works from that period are the frescoes by Belisario Corenzio, Battistello Caracciolo. Mainly after 1734, when the Palace was by now the seat of the Bourbons, numerous changes came about, continuing throughout the decades, to update current trends or for reasons of war. It is thanks to the Bourbons, who reigned during the 19th Century, that the Palace owes its current look: The evocative Hanging Gardens, facing the sea, from which one can still today enjoy a view of the gulf, of Capri and Ischia, being some of the most beautiful and luminous of Naples; the festivities apartment and the monumental Library with its prestigious sections. After a fire, the staircase was reconstructed and enriched with adornments.
The Palace was then enlarged by an additional north wing towards San Ferdinando, a work by Gaetano Genovese. The Savoia family carried out further changes to the Palace by moving the Royal apartment to the second floor and turning the previous one into a museum; the façade niches of Vanvitelli became closed in arches for structural needs, and were filled in with statues of the founders of the dynasty which reigned in Naples.
During the last war, the apartment was re-acquired and subjected to bombardments and pillaging, plundering objects relevant to the aspects of everyday life of the Royals, but some things are still conserved:
furnishings, paintings, historical tapestries, neo-Baroque and late Empire furniture - especially relevant pieces of furnishings from the Murattiana era, due to the impeccable taste of Carolina Murat – as a whole contributing to the testimony of a historical journey of definite interest. Over the last decade and adjacent to the apartment, an Art Gallery has been added which exhibits: historical paintings belonging to past Royals; coming from Capodimonte and those lent to public establishments, paintings from the 16th and 17th Centuries in the Belvedere room, 17th-18th Century in the mid-wing room and Neapolitan painters from the 19th Century: Ribera, Vaccaro, Monrealese, Spardarino, Bilijert and Preti. There is also a collection of paintings from the Emilian classicism coming from the Farnesina collection which was inherited by Carlo di Borbone.