The Royal Palace is symbol of Spanish greatness and it was built on a design of the great architect Domenico Fontana, in a strategic location, not far from the port and in front of a perfect flat space for military parades and large gatherings of people. It was 1600 and two years earlier Fernandez Ruiz de Castro was appointed Naples viceroy by Philip III.

The main facade (169 meters long), the courtyard and part of the interiors keep the seventeenth-century layout, but over time numerous modifications took place, under the bourbons and until the Napoleonic period with Joachim Murat, for over two-hundred years, with the involvement of other well-known architects such as Luigi Vanvitelli and Ferdinando Fuga. In 1734, Naples became the capital of the Kingdom of the two Sicilies and Ferdinand IV gave a strong impulse to the completion of the palace by building a Court Theatre, created in 1768 by Ferdinando Fuga, and the eastern arm, which is used as a National Library since 1927. Walking through the Throne Room, the Ambassadors Room, the Royal Chapel, you enter in a context of eighteenth-century splendor: furniture worked by Neapolitan ebonies, decorations, carpets and tapestries of French manufacture and of the Naples Royal Tapestry, paintings of the sixteeeth and the seventeenth century and works from the Caravaggio period, porcelain, furnishings and artistic artifacts of absolute value.

The Time Gallery
In the recently restored space of the eighteenth-century Bourbon stables, an intriguing multimedia itinerary has been created, full of cultural stimuli and suggestions, which crosses twenty-five centuries of the history of Naples, from the Greco-Roman era to the recognition of the city center as a UNESCO heritage site in the twentieth century, enhancing the most significant characters of the various eras and reproducing the atmospheres of places and monuments, also with the aid of works of art.


Information:
Historical apartment hours: 9 a.m. - 8 p.m. (closed: Wednesday, Dec. 25 and Jan. 1)
Time Gallery Hours: 2:30 p.m. - 7 p.m. (closed: Wednesdays, Dec. 25 and Jan. 1)
Hanging Garden Hours: unguided access (duration 15 minutes): Mon-Thu-Fri. 11 a.m., 12 noon, 1 and 3:15 p.m., Sat. 1 and 2:30 p.m., Sun. 3:15 p.m.
Guided tours (duration 40 minutes): Sat. 11 a.m., 12 noon, 3:30 p.m. and 4:15 p.m. - Sun. and holidays 11 a.m., 11:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.
Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. for school or adult groups only by reservation
Full price ticket: € 10
Reduced ticket: € 2