I took advantage of the Christmas holidays to go to Caserta and visit the splendid one Palace of Caserta designed by Luigi Vanvitelli for the Bourbons. A place of incredible beauty and splendor, which has nothing to take away - if not in tourist use - from well-known palaces such as Versailles in Paris or Schönbrunn in Vienna. The winter period did not help me: the garden was immersed in an unpleasant mist and the rain discouraged even the most daring in exploring.
The use of the Palace can be improved in my opinion, for example there is no separate ticket for the visit to the palace and to the garden only: those who stay two days and find bad weather, like me, could at least split the expense (13.80 euros) into two tranches, without having to buy back a full ticket.
But still the Royal Palace is extraordinary and infinitely large and sumptuous and should be visited even just to understand what infinite beauty one could surround oneself with in the past, being sovereigns with unlimited powers. For me, the amazement was added to the pleasant surprise of finding, in the infinite theories of rooms in the royal apartments, a permanent exhibition of contemporary art. I did not expect it and it was not very marked; it was the caretaker who said that “if we wanted that side there is contemporary art”.
The exhibition is called Terrae motus and it is the result of the gallerist activity of Lucio Amelio, a lover of contemporary art. The Amelio collection is bequeathed to the Royal Palace of Caserta and has been here since 1994 (the year in which Amelio died), to commemorate the earthquake than in 1980 shocked the regions of Campania and Basilicata.
The most important are represented in 36 works international artists contemporaries: from Julian Schnabel to Kounellis, from Barcelò to Rauschenberg, from Bufano to Pistoletto. The works are exhibited in sixteen rooms, all communicating, of the eighteenth-century apartments; artists are grouped according to their nationality.
The juxtaposition between the neoclassical style and the broken or geometric shapes of today's artists is strong but very suggestive. It completely breaks the fil rouge of the Royal Palace, but those immense canvases that often seem to scream could not look so good anywhere else.
Contemporary art is not easy and I am not a connoisseur: but I think everyone can try to absorb the messages launched by today's artists through color, materials and shapes.
The Royal Palace of Caserta is open every day except Tuesdays from 8.30 to 19.30. The garden closes following the rhythm of the hours of light (in this month, January, at 14.30pm)
