From Boccaccio to the Grand Tour and now also museum.
Clean air and lush green. Plus the unforgettable view over the Gulf of Naples. These features attracted attention to the hill at the bottom of Mount Faito, which appeared to be an ideal place to build a royal residence. As it happened in the second half of the 13th century, definitely before 1280. The first to enjoy the excellent position of that building was Charles I of Anjou, at whose epoch date back the oldest documents of the palace on the hill in the city that already had the castle by the sea from which it would have taken its name.
And Domus de loco sano was probably the original name of that hill which was later transformed into Quisisana. Although another version traces it back to an exclamation - "Here you heal!" - pronounced by Charles II of Anjou, who was cured there of a serious illness. And this also contributed to the fame of the palace, a favorite holiday destination for the Angevin kings and the most prominent figures of the Neapolitan court.
Among those, there also was Giovanni Boccaccio, who in Castellammare set the sixth story of the tenth day of the Decameron, where it is said that a knight, Neri degli Uberti, would have moved to the coastal town and there he would have chosen an elevated place among "olive trees, hazelnuts and chestnuts "to build a" beautiful and comfortable building ", accompanied by a" delightful garden "in which he had also built a fish nursery. In reality, Roberto d'Angiò, passionate about the place, wanted to expand the palace, with two new buildings, one facing the sea and the other the driveway. The two buildings had three floors: the servants lived on the first, the royal rooms on the second and the third was for representation. This made it even more clearly the favorite vacation spot of the sovereigns, who benefited from the Quisisana even during the plagues. The first was in 1401 Ladislao di Durazzo, who took refuge there with his family to escape the plague that claimed victims in the capital. And twenty years later, Giovanna II escaped a new epidemic. The favor of the kings of the Angevin period faded under the Aragonese and with the viceroys, which became the possession of notables of the state, the progressive decline began.
In 1541 Castellammare became a fief of the Farnese family and so the property of the Quisisana, now in ruins, became part of the heritage inherited from Charles of Bourbon by his mother Elisabetta Farnese. It was the beginning of a new golden period for the oldest palace in the kingdom. The restoration and restructuring of the “Casino del Quisisana” took place with Ferdinand IV. The works started in 1759 brought together the two original structures in an L-shaped building, fenced the property area, fixed the water systems that used water coming from Faito, and created avenues and paths for the use of the nearby wood of Quisisana. A beautiful Italian garden of about two hectares was also create. With Ferdinand II, an English imprint was given to the entire property, a favorite place of the king, who is said to hunt quail from the terrace.
Between 1758 and 1790, even if there always were works in progress, the royal family missed the appointment with the holiday in Castellammare only a couple of times. The residence, on the other hand, offered every comfort with its 49 thousand square meters of living space, on two levels, with one hundred rooms, a chapel and the splendid terraces one overlooking the gulf and the other on the woods. Even the wood, known as the four Fountains of the King, was to be fully experienced, with its paths, the fountains, the statues and the belvedere between plane trees and horse chestnuts, elms, holm oaks and hornbeams, as well as numerous tropical plants. Very large, the wood extended between the Faito and the Sorrentine road, between San Pietro river and Monache river. In addition, a farmhouse, a church, a tower, a wax factory, the stables, a farm with a rich orchard and crops for the house and homes for the workers were part of the Quisisana complex. Therefore the Quisisana palace became a stop on the Grand Tour. And its beauty inspired many artists: from Hackert and Dahl to the painters of the Posillipo School. A period of splendor of which only the structures remain, as the furnishings were completely plundered by brigands after the fall of the Bourbons.
Passed to the Savoy, in 1877 the palace entered the state property and was then sold to the Municipality of Castellammare that sold it to private individuals. In 1898 it was transformed into a hotel, the "Margherita" and then abandoned in 1902. Later housed the Annunziata college between 1909 and 1910 and was a military hospital in both world wars. After the war it became a hotel again: in 1923 the "Royal Hotel Quisisana" had 200 rooms and was listed among the best in Italy. The hotel was then restored also after World War II, remaining an accommodation facility until the 1960s. The 1980 earthquake caused a lot of damage and the subsequent abandonment did the rest. Until the complex restoration started in 2000 and ended in 2009.
After a long planning phase, the new life of Quisisana coincides with the birth of the Archaeological Museum of Stabiae. In 2019, the Municipality of Castellammare signed an agreement with which it loaned the building to the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, which oversaw the preparation of the museum spaces on the noble floor. There are kept the eight thousand findings collected in the Antiquarium, closed since the 1990s, along with other pieces from the Archaeological Museum of Naples and the frescoes of the Stabian villas. In particular, Villa Arianna and Villa San Marco, with which a tour circuit has been created.
The museum is named after Libero D'Orsi, the well-deserving headmaster of the Castellammare middle school, who in the 1950s resumed the excavation of Stabia, bringing to light a significant and valuable part of the remains of the Roman age, for which he created the Antiquarium in his school.
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