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00:00Palaces, the most spectacular and lavish homes on earth.
00:09Luxuriously designed for the royals who wanted the biggest and the best.
00:18Behind the golden gates of these royal megastructures are incredible stories waiting to be discovered.
00:25Infamous monarchs from history and the artists, designers and engineers who turned their grand visions into a reality.
00:36These are the most opulent, flamboyant and innovative royal residences around the world.
00:44In this episode, the Royal Palace of Koserta is a neoclassical masterpiece.
00:51This gigantic structure has 1,200 rooms on five floors spread across 762,000 square meters and by volume is the largest palace in the world.
01:05The hub of the Bourbon-ruled Kingdom of Naples, it combines stunning architecture with mind-boggling engineering to create a truly unique building.
01:16Making Koserta one of the world's greatest palaces.
01:20Lying 30 kilometers from Naples in southern Italy, the Royal Palace of Koserta was built in 1753 for King Charles VII.
01:29But by the early 1860s, the Kingdom of Naples was no more.
01:35Despite the short amount of time this spectacular palace existed as a royal residence, it is famous for the engineering feats and revolutionary politics that were the lifeblood of the Kingdom.
02:00One of Charles VII's first acts as King of Naples was to commission a brand new palace, 30 kilometers north of the capital.
02:16Charles VII chose Koserta. It's actually, when you go now there, it seems rather a little bit in the middle of nowhere comparatively,
02:24because there were always revolts in Naples. He wanted it away from Naples, because otherwise I think he feared that there'd be constantly
02:31people bashing on the windows, saying down with you. He wanted it away from there, but he also wanted away from the possibility of sea attacks.
02:37The most magnificent city in Europe was Paris, maybe. But Naples was on the same plan.
02:52Carlo was a very young and determined king to make this capital important.
02:59And so he wanted to build this regia to expand his propaganda against his relatives, Bourbons and Habsburgs.
03:06He wanted to build this regia to expand his propaganda against his relatives Bourbons and Habsburgs.
03:12To realize his dream, Charles approached one of Italy's most prestigious architects, Luigi Van Vitelli.
03:29Van Vitelli's real name was Van Vitelli. His father was a Dutchman who had settled in this southern capital.
03:46And he was a genius. And his job, he was told by the king, you've got to make it bigger than Versailles.
03:54So it was bigger than Versailles.
03:58It was definitely statement architecture. This palace said,
04:02I am the king. I am not being deposed. And I am here to stay. And I am rich. And I am powerful. And bow down to me, all country.
04:11So Van Vitelli, he had grand, grand ambitions. And the sky was the limit, really,
04:17because Charles VII wanted everything that could possibly be done to create him as the great, great ruler who would never be pushed off his throne.
04:27Not only did Luigi Van Vitelli design the grand palace. In 1753, he also engineered a water system that is the lifeblood of the entire kingdom, the Caroline Aqueduct.
04:42The challenge of bringing water to the palace from the Taberno mountain region, 38 kilometers away, was massive.
04:53The water system source in the province of Benevento is 254 meters above sea level.
05:00By the time it reaches the waterfall in the palace gardens, the elevation is 203 meters above sea level.
05:07Transporting 700 liters of water per second, Van Vitelli's aqueduct is a mathematical marvel.
05:18When you're designing an aqueduct, the art is to get the water to flow along it at an even rate.
05:22You have to lay the aqueduct to a very exact gradient. In this case, the gradient is just one millimetre in a metre.
05:29And there are many things that are very difficult to do, but measuring one millimetre in a metre with the type of instruments you had in the 18th century was not easy.
05:39And to consistently lay the aqueduct over this huge distance at that kind of gradient would have been extremely difficult.
05:46If you think about it, the best way to allow water to transport over long distances is just to allow gravity to do its thing.
05:55The problem is that if the water is flowing too fast, then it can actually erode the structure because you get, you know, fast flowing water
06:04and it's kind of cutting away at the stone or the tunnels that you've built or the mud or whatever materials you're using.
06:10But on the flip side, if it's not flowing fast enough, then bacteria and other nasty stuff can start growing in it and actually contaminate the water.
06:20So there's some kind of happy medium ground that the engineers would have had to figure out over a vast distance.
06:26And that to me is some really impressive engineering.
06:29The majority of the Caroline aqueduct is underground, hidden amongst the mountainous terrain.
06:37We had about three years to make a gallery of just one kilometre.
06:44And we had this encounter with these two operai who were able to break the last diaphragm of the rock
06:59with Bampitelli from one side and his other collaborators, Architetto Collecini from the other.
07:07In this company it was a joy for everyone.
07:10But clearly this opera had also had a quite high cost in its realisation.
07:17And for the time it was around 622,000 Ducats, the current 10.5 million euros.
07:25It took nearly a decade to complete the epic project, opening on the 7th of May 1762.
07:33The part of the aqueduct that is visible, the Ponte della Valla, was at the time the longest bridge in Europe.
07:41We started the work in 753.
07:45Think about the Ponte della Valla, which is the most important architecture work.
07:50Think about the length of 523 metres, the height of 60 metres.
07:56Three arches of arches.
07:58So it was quite important for the time.
08:04Van Vateli did these extraordinary calculations.
08:08But to build it is a whole other challenge.
08:11Because when you're building things out of big pieces of stone, when you're tunneling through mountain,
08:17when you're creating these channels, things move.
08:20Your stone might be half a millimetre bigger than you expected.
08:23So there must have been a huge amount of accuracy that went into the actual construction of it in order to achieve that really, really gradual slope.
08:35In the history of fountains and cascades, there are many examples where people spent a great deal of money and then it didn't work.
08:44What was so successful at Caserta was that it so obviously works, that the cascades are so dramatic, that the water is produced in such quantity,
08:56that all of the gymnastics, all of the huge length of the aqueduct is worthwhile because it creates these amazing effects at the end.
09:05It creates one of the most dramatic cascades ever constructed.
09:10It's absolutely amazing to see it.
09:13It really is a true feat of engineering simply to carry the water.
09:19To think it didn't even take ten years to build, I think it's one of the greatest aqueducts in the world.
09:24The story of the Palace of Caserta begins two decades before the Caroline Aqueduct was constructed.
09:33During the War of Polish Succession in 1734, the Kingdom of Naples was acquired by the Spanish House of the Bourbon Dynasty.
09:43These are really a hugely powerful family who had fingers in every pie, we might say.
09:51They were great, they were powerful and at every opportunity they tried to increase their power and make them greater.
09:58The Bourbons had so far ruled France and so then they ruled Spain.
10:04Philip V of Spain had a very ambitious wife, Elizabeth Farnese.
10:11So, by dint of a lot of intrigue, she managed to dictate foreign policy.
10:18And the Spanish army conquered southern Italy, which is Naples and Sicily, known as the two Sicilies.
10:29So, there was this enormous family alliance, France, Spain, the two Sicilies.
10:38The new Bourbon Kingdom was gifted to the royal couple's 18-year-old son, the Duke of Parma, who subsequently became King Charles VII of Naples in 1735.
10:50But the new king was far from impressed with his new home.
10:55The conditions in which Carlos di Bourbon found the reign were miserable.
11:02Even the Real Palace in which he was living, he didn't have any buildings.
11:08He didn't have any housing.
11:09He didn't receive a loan to the nobility napoletana.
11:13And, of course, the first thing that you need, if you're in charge, is a nice big, new, shiny palace.
11:34One of the most celebrated rooms at Caserta is the library.
11:41The 14,000 books that are housed here date back almost 300 years, to a time when the Neapolitan palace was the heart of a royal dynasty.
11:51It's not a very big collection, but there are some treasures.
11:57And many of these books were published for kings, for princes, and widespread only among the aristocracy of Europe of that period.
12:12Among the artifacts are drawings of architect Luigi van Vitelli's ambitious project, which would eventually become the royal palace of Caserta.
12:22The blueprints from 1752 reveal a truly grand vision.
12:27These are the original van Vitelli's designs.
12:32Van Vitelli designed Reggia inside and outside, because he was a stenographer and wanted to make a complete project, a very inclusive project, in and out.
12:47So he projected all the spaces, room by room, one by one, and all these sections.
12:55Probably he had some assistance, because the work was impossible to be done by only one person.
13:02He ordered all the materials, all the stones, the marbles of royal palace, and paid all the workers, also craftsmen.
13:17Today we tend to think that we can build things faster.
13:20What's interesting about modern construction is it's very rarely as fast as construction in the past.
13:26The main determinant of construction speed was the number of people on the job.
13:30Caserta used people from all over the local area. In fact, it was a major source of employment.
13:35And the more money you put into a job, the faster you could do it.
13:39It was built in the 18th century. And at the time, actually, the techniques weren't that broad or wide.
13:47So big buildings of that scale tended to be built from stone, from masonry, from brick.
13:53So you can see with the Palace of Caserta that it's a big, imposing, large, heavy sort of structure,
13:59which is typical of what you would get if you build out of masonry.
14:03Like many buildings in this period, what you see is not necessarily the material underneath.
14:08What may look like stone is very often just brick behind.
14:12What may look like marble is very often painted or polished plaster.
14:16This is the world of effect, of great spaces created with as little cost as you can,
14:23because you can afford more of it. And Caserta is all about more.
14:33The rectangular palace measures 247 by 184 meters and encloses four inner courts.
14:42Its five floors cover 47,000 square meters each.
14:47And by volume, Caserta is the largest palace in the world, with more than 2 million cubic meters of space.
14:55The techniques that we would have seen in the 18th century would actually not have been that different to some of the techniques we were seeing in the Egyptian civilization and the Roman civilization,
15:07because the premise was the same, that you're taking units of a material, whether that's brick or stone, and then you're binding them together in some way.
15:15So the binding could have been through types of glue, which are mortars.
15:20So they're mixes of lime powder, different kinds of resins that basically formed the glue that allowed you to stick these big blocks of masonry together.
15:30So foundations becomes a challenge, because you've got all this weight, you've got all this stone,
15:34and making sure that the structures are not sinking down into the ground.
15:38The engineers would have had to make sure that the ground had been carefully studied,
15:42and that the weight could actually be nicely spread out, that it stayed nice and stable,
15:47and a lot of manual labor would have been used.
15:50So I think if you think about the sheer number of people that would have been slogging away trying to build these palaces,
15:56it probably kind of boggles the mind, really, compared to the number of people you would see on a construction site today.
16:03Inside the four walls of the imposing structure, Van Vitelli's layout shows inspiration came from more than just one influence.
16:13The palace is something of a mix of designs. There is Renaissance, there's Neoclassical, there's Baroque.
16:19What the Bourbons are trying to say is they are as powerful and as great as the Roman Empire,
16:24and as the great classical rulers.
16:29One of Van Vitelli's most stunning creations is the grand staircase.
16:36The marble steps rise 32 meters high across two levels and are overlooked by a fake dome.
16:43Orchestras could hide inside the structure and perform music for the king without being seen.
16:49Let's start off and we can already understand the particularity of the composition.
17:02In this scale, compared to those of the European baroque,
17:08the very important and beautiful scales that exist in Europe,
17:15the fruitor always knows where he has to look,
17:21the message is a clear and safe message.
17:27In this case, this sort of counter-fetched, with the majesty of the king,
17:34the great symbol.
17:35At the top of the first set of eight-meter-wide steps are three sculptures that Van Vitelli added
17:43to intimidate the king's visitors.
17:45The merit, the truth, and in the middle, the royal majesty.
17:51Then, as you turn to continue the ascent, the staircase splits and continues upwards
18:00as two separate five-meter-wide flights with a gradient of just 15 degrees.
18:06From an engineering point of view, the side steps that kind of sweep around the central staircase
18:25were made from a single piece of limicella stone from Trapani.
18:30And when I try to think about, well, how did they transport that stone?
18:35How did they get it to site?
18:37How did they then lift it in place and then carve it and make sure that it all fit together properly?
18:42That's some pretty impressive design right there.
18:45The royal staircase was then and is now one of the greatest parts of Caserta.
18:51The marble, it's this huge, sweeping panorama, and it's so long and so huge.
18:58It really is incredible.
19:00And I think when you stand there, you really can imagine the grandeur, the beauty of this huge court.
19:11Another of Van Vitelli's lavish creations at Caserta is the stunning Court Theatre.
19:18Vincenzo Mazzarella believes the groundbreaking auditorium is a masterpiece of design.
19:24The Court Theatre was designed by Carlo III, designed by Luigi Van Vitelli.
19:35But the first project, Van Vitelli had designed and thought the theatre out of the wall of the palace.
19:47After all, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted the theatre inside the body of the palace.
19:58Also because the outside theatre, let's say, the wall of the palace, had a civil function.
20:07The king said, no, I need a court theatre for the court, for my family.
20:15And there was a passageway from the royal palace so that the king could attend the performances.
20:34The first problem that any architect faced with a theatre to design has to tackle is lines of sight.
20:42How do you design a theatre so that everybody in every seat can see the stage?
20:47And thus you have to do a drawing where you lay out lines from every point in the stage back to the seats.
20:53This produces the great arch, the arcing semi-circular shape of the theatre.
21:00Integrating the theatre into the palace itself proved tricky for the architect.
21:05When he projects the theatre of the palace, Van Vitelli has a structural difficulty,
21:12because in this arm there are two walls.
21:17The theatre of the palace is above the palace.
21:21So, structurally and at the engineering level, how do we sustain these walls,
21:27these important steps of the palace?
21:30We have these walls that, under the foundations,
21:37come up to the palace, when they become a narrow corridor,
21:43but they serve to sustain the spin of the wheel, the wheel.
21:49Now I will give you a gift, a place suggestive and hidden,
21:55that no one ever sees.
21:56Follow me.
22:00This is the sottopalcoscenic.
22:09Compre?
22:10Here we go.
22:11And now, let's see what we are structurally and architecturally wonderful.
22:19Come on.
22:24Look, a radial wall.
22:27We are kids.
22:28We are now below a plate.
22:39All this oneя to hologram того,
22:44оно поддержive and supported abandonment.
22:45It's a completely different invention with Van Vitellian.
22:46It took 13 years to build the theater which was finally ready to stage productions in 1769, anyone lucky enough to get a seat here would have been completely blown away.
23:13This theater is unique in its genre because it has some characteristics that do not have any theater in the world. Why is it unique?
23:25First, because Van Vitelli, to support these huge weights that come from the top, what does it do? He shuts the foundations of the theater inside the foundations of the Palace.
23:41The first floor balcony actually sits at ground level. The stalls are five meters below, deep in the foundations of the palace, which gives the theater extra structural strength.
23:54Van Vitelli also had another trick up his sleeve.
23:58One unique feature of this theater, which I think is quite fun really, is that they had an openable backdrop. And this was designed by having a detachable portal. And what they would do is basically open up this backdrop towards the end of the performance.
24:16And then you would have the Royal Parks as your scenery for the play or for the music that you were watching. And that must have been a really, really special thing to witness.
24:27The court theater is one of my favorite parts of Caserta. It's really very well preserved. It's so beautiful. It's just very ornate, very elegant. And it is the ultimate extravagance. You've got your own theater. You don't even have to go out. Everyone comes to you. And the idea of just being able to pop into your palace, into a theater is marvelous.
24:51Some of the performances were so realistic that the audience weren't even sure if the drama unfolding on stage was part of the production.
25:02The spectacle called The Didone Abandonation.
25:04The演出 for the film is called The Didone Abandonation.
25:06The演出 for the spectacle were about the scenes.
25:07The actors who did construction that construction on the wall are in the place.
25:10From here to the Others, after the park, in the city, at a place in theुve.
25:15And at a time, the演出 for the house sun was've traveled.
25:20The actors have been created by the fire and the lights they're active and the努流 the sun.
25:25To the scene, the actors run.
25:26The actors escape from there is a fight for the spirits.
25:28The actors are forced to take them back and bring them back into the spectacle.
25:33The Royal Court Theatre proved to be architect Luigi Van Vitelli's last hurrah.
25:41The Court Theatre of the Reggio di Caserta is the only construction
25:47completed completely by the architect Van Vitelli.
25:52Van Vitelli, in addition to projecting the whole Van Vitellian complex,
25:57so to have the whole idea, he really realises only and exclusively the Court Theatre.
26:04He can see, ultimately, only the Court Theatre.
26:09Luigi Van Vitelli died in 1773,
26:12but his designs continued to be realized in and around the palace.
26:18The sprawling 300-acre park that surrounds Caserta is another engineering marvel.
26:32Architect Leteria Spurrier appreciates the scale of Van Vitelli's design.
26:39Luigi Van Vitelli had the original idea for the Royal Park.
26:44He had been appointed by the King Charles to plan a new magnificent royal palace
26:52and a huge park to compete with the other European royal residents
26:58and to have an alternative place to the capital that was in Naples.
27:05Part of Van Vitelli's elaborate design included an impressive optical illusion.
27:11The purpose of the telescope effect that you can see from the central gallery of the palace
27:18is to include in one single frame all the elements that are along the central axis of the park.
27:27It's an optical effect that is based on a perspective,
27:32so the distance from the palace to the waterfall seems shorter than it really is.
27:40And what is particularly dramatic about the garden is the way it's laid out in a perspectival fashion.
27:47That is, it's a very long garden and it's symmetrical straight in front of you.
27:53And thus you have no way of judging how long it is.
27:57And what's more, it's on a slope.
27:59So one's eye assumes it is as flat, but it is of course sloping up,
28:04with great cascades coming down it.
28:07So you have this unnerving feeling of not knowing how far away anything is.
28:14The eye is dragged from the back of the palace.
28:17You look up the garden and the earth is a couple of kilometers away,
28:21this wonderful fountain and the stream coming down towards you.
28:25And it really was staggering.
28:27I personally think that what's really impressive about that is again the setting out of it.
28:33How did you actually make it perfectly flat?
28:36How did you get it to be perfectly straight?
28:39To ensure that that visual effect and that perspective ended up so incredibly impressive.
28:45Despite commissioning both the Caroline Aqueduct and the Palace of Caserta itself,
28:53Charles VII never actually spent a night there.
28:56In August 1759, after serving as King of Naples for 25 years, he headed back to Spain.
29:04Charles VII commissioned the palace, was in love with the palace, dreamt of the palace,
29:09but he never actually lived there because he abdicated the throne of Naples and Sicily
29:14to go and be Charles III of Spain.
29:17And so instead the throne of Naples and Sicily came to his son Ferdinand and he took over the palace.
29:23In 1767, at the age of 16, Ferdinand took full control of the kingdom.
29:32The following year, he married Maria Carolina of Austria, combining two of Europe's royal powerhouses, the Bourbons and the Habsburgs.
29:41Well, they always said that he was only interested in hunting and practical jokes.
29:47He was, in fact, much brighter than people realized.
29:50But he married a really tough lady who was Marie Antoinette's sister, Maria Carolina,
29:57who ran the show for a long time.
30:00Maria Carolina is one of my favorite figures.
30:03She is this incredible woman.
30:05She was married off to Ferdinand when she was really very young
30:09and she arrived a shy young princess in the palace in a very different place.
30:14I mean, Naples and Sicily are nothing like the formal palace of Austria,
30:19but she was an intelligent, determined woman.
30:24She was the daughter of Maria Teresa of Austria, the emperor.
30:27She was the daughter of character.
30:29Her sister was the queen of France.
30:31And therefore, this habit of the government, with this education,
30:37to command and orientate the events, she was particularly good.
30:43Especially with a king like Ferdinand IV,
30:46who was of a very, let's say, malleable character.
30:55Adjacent to the palace, the Belvedere of San Lucio had been part of the kingdom
31:00during Charles VII's time at Caserta.
31:04Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina reigned through a progressive era
31:09known as the Age of Enlightenment or Illuminism.
31:13And, under the new royal couple, San Lucio was turned into a self-sufficient commune,
31:19which included its own silk factory.
31:22Alessia Parabello runs tours of the complex, which still functions to this day.
31:30Ferdinand started the restoration of Belvedere between 1773 and 1774.
31:37The hall was transformed into a church, while the cowhouse was used as a silk factory.
31:45In 1789, the royal colony of San Lucio was founded,
31:51and little by little, it came to form a community of weavers.
31:56He created a community of work, residence, health, instruction in San Lucio.
32:10That is the first in Europe.
32:14Ferdinand extended the grounds of Caserta to incorporate San Lucio.
32:18Since he arrived here, Ferdinand IV hired an architect, Francesco Collecini, pupil of Luigi Van Vitelli,
32:28and asked him to enclose the entire property with a wall and he enlarged the palace.
32:35In a short time, this place became the favourite site of the king.
32:40This is the only example in which a factory was located inside the royal palace.
32:45The workers at San Lucio provided for the palace and, in return, the king and queen provided them with a place to live.
32:56All workers were assured the house, equal rights, equal clothes for all,
33:02the earnings were proportional to merit.
33:05Everybody had the right to go to school from the age of six, it was compulsory,
33:11and after that the guys could learn the art of silk.
33:16Ferdinand IV secured the funeral and medical expenses to all.
33:22The San Lucio factory is a fascinating and really very early example of a form of socialism, really,
33:30because this was the factory where all the materials were made for the palace,
33:35silk, furniture, all kinds of things that they needed.
33:38So it really was the beginning of the idea that you could give workers homes,
33:43you could give workers a place to live, and job security as well,
33:47which you start seeing in the 19th century.
33:49This drawing machines were activated by an hydraulic wheel that is under this drawer,
33:58linked with this wooden column that rotated so the silk can twist itself and reinforce.
34:12The hydraulic wheel of San Lucio is still powered by the water from the Caroline Aqueduct,
34:19some 250 years after it was built.
34:23Silk are still made for clients worldwide, like Buckingham Palace, Vatican, White House,
34:33and all the most important institutions of the world.
34:37I love the project, I love the fact that the workers were so important for the king.
34:44I love the fact that there are these beautiful houses,
34:49and this project full of principles of socialism and French Illuminism.
34:59King Ferdinand IV's wife, Maria Carolina, came from a powerful family,
35:05the Habsburgs.
35:07Her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, ruled Austria for 40 years,
35:12and her sister, Marie Antoinette, was the queen of France.
35:17Maria Carolina was a chip off the old block.
35:20She was a great matriarch, huge amounts of children.
35:24She was a great politician.
35:26She believed that you as an empress or a queen, you're not just a consort,
35:32you are there to help rule.
35:34The whole idea that women were simply meant to listen and obey their husband,
35:39she had no time for that.
35:40Maria Carolina, she knew she was more intelligent, more political,
35:44more savvy, more sharp than her husband.
35:47One of Maria Carolina's greatest additions to Caserta is the English style garden.
35:54Created in 1785 by Carlo Van Vitelli and English gardener John Andrew Graefer,
36:02Maria Carolina's inspiration behind it was born out of competition with her sister.
36:08The English gardener was inspired by the Petit Trianon
36:15that the regina of France, Maria Antonietta,
36:17had made it as a place in Versailles.
36:20Maria Antonietta was the sister of Maria Carolina,
36:23and the regina of Napoleon decided to invest part of her personal heritage
36:29to create an informal garden or romantic landscape,
36:34to compete with the Petit Trianon
36:36and to have herself a place of delight, a place of pleasure.
36:43The garden was a means of escape for Maria Carolina,
36:46whose marriage to Ferdinand was not a happy one.
36:50Despite this, she had 18 children with her husband,
36:54seven of which survived to adulthood.
36:57When she gave birth to her first son, Carlo, in 1775,
37:03Maria Carolina became even more powerful.
37:07When she'd had a son, that meant that she was allowed to be on the council,
37:11and pretty much she began to rule the court.
37:15Ferdinand was a man who was not the greatest of intellects.
37:18He loved dancing and he loved hunting,
37:22so his life was all about hunting,
37:24so quite a lot of his business was done while he was hunting,
37:27but she didn't offer a lot of the business without him.
37:31She was a key figure in the court,
37:34Patchnage went through her.
37:36She was vital to all the political systems, all the ambassadors,
37:39they made very good friends with her.
37:41One example is Emma Hamilton,
37:43the mistress of Lord Hamilton,
37:44the mistress of Lord Hamilton,
37:45who was vital to all the political systems,
37:46all the ambassadors,
37:47they made very good friends with her.
37:49One example is Emma Hamilton,
37:51the mistress of Lord Nelson,
37:52who became best friends with Maria Carolina
37:54when she was married to Sir William Hamilton,
37:56the ambassador,
37:58because William Hamilton encouraged that,
38:00because he knew that the route to power in Naples,
38:02the route to influence in Naples,
38:03was not through the king, but through the queen.
38:07OPRAH RODELMANN BUTTERiao But all power is fleeting.
38:10...
38:22In France, revolution was in the air and the ire of the angry mobs
38:28was focused directly on Maria Carolina's sister, Marie Antoinette.
38:34Marie Antoinette.
38:37The hardest thing of Maria Carolina's life was to read, was to see, was to hear about what was going on in France with her sister and be powerless to help.
38:48There was so little she could do to help.
38:50What could she do?
38:50Send in an army to rescue her sister and it was very painful for her.
38:55And Emma Hamilton, the mistress of Nelson, the wife of Sir William Hamilton, the ambassador, she gained access to Maria Carolina first up.
39:03Because she delivered a secret letter to her from Marie Antoinette.
39:07So Emma went to see Marie Antoinette when she was imprisoned, took a secret letter to Maria Carolina.
39:14And after this, Maria Carolina and Emma were best friends.
39:17They were never to be parted.
39:22After the fallout from the French Revolution, in which Marie Antoinette was beheaded in 1793,
39:29Napoleon Bonaparte swept his French army across Europe.
39:33starting a series of wars and creating chaos.
39:37At the turn of the 19th century, he arrived in Naples.
39:42Napoleon invades.
39:43But the reason why Napoleon gets such a good welcome in Naples is because people have seen about the French Revolution and they are starting to rise up.
39:53They are rising up against being governed by the Bourbons.
39:56They are angry, they are Republican, and so Napoleon, curiously, because he was, you know, one of the most dictatorial people you could imagine,
40:04creates this upswell of Republican sentiment who ally with him because they think,
40:10Oh, well, if we follow Napoleon, if we help Napoleon, we'll get free and we won't be ruled anymore, we'll be able to be independent.
40:18So Napoleon is seen by an awful lot of ordinary people in Naples as their liberator from Bourbon tyranny.
40:26Protected by the British Royal Navy, Ferdinand and Maria Carolina fled the kingdom.
40:31And the Royal Navy evacuated the Royal Family to Sicily where they set out the war because the French couldn't cross the Straits of Messina without being blown out of the water.
40:43Maria Carolina was forced to flee to Sicily, the first in 1799 during the Partenope Republic, the Repubblica Napoletana,
40:53so the revolution, and the second with the advent of the French Revolution, so between 1805 and 1815.
41:00After this second exile, she didn't return to Naples, she went to Austria and died in 1814.
41:07Maria Carolina had left a world that she no longer understood.
41:15It was so painful for her to see her beloved sister thrust off her throne, put into prison, eventually executed, and then she herself lost her throne.
41:26It was a terrifying time. To her, it seemed like utter madness.
41:31Europe was on the brink of pure anarchy by throwing off kings, queens, executing them.
41:36It was the most difficult time of her life to see her sister suffering and not being able to help her.
41:42And then, of course, Napoleon came for her too.
41:46But Maria Carolina's legacy lives on at Caserta in the vast and beautiful grounds.
41:52Il Giardino Inglese della Regia di Caserta fu sicuramente il primo giardino di paesaggio in Italia, sia a notizia di altri giardini romantici o giardini, diciamo spontanei,
42:06quindi ispirati all'idea di una natura senza regole che apparisse naturale, ma questi giardini risalgono alla seconda metà dell'Ottocento,
42:15quindi di sicuro il Giardino della Regia di Caserta è il più antico giardino di paesaggio che abbiamo in Italia.
42:20Although only two kings ever ruled at the royal palace of Caserta,
42:29it stands as one of the most incredible buildings in Europe and remains an engineering colossus
42:36with its own theatre and factory in the grounds.
42:40The first thing I loved when I went here in 1983,
42:48it was the perspective from the square to the cascade.
42:53It was astonishing.
42:57La Regia di Caserta è un luogo speciale perché raccoglie le memorie di una famiglia importante
43:05che ha dato molto per l'Italia meridionale,
43:12molto di più di quanto hanno dato i viceregni precedenti.
43:16It's huge, it's architecturally brilliant, the aqueduct is fantastic, the gardens are amazing,
43:22but why I love it is because it is a symbol of the great peak before the fall of monarchy,
43:30of royalty, of these dictatorial, tyrannical, great imperial families.
43:34It's the last moment, it's the last flush of their grandeur
43:39because after this they had lost everything and they were never going to get back their power.
43:52It's huge, it's huge, it's huge.