18th-Century Royal Palace at Caserta with the Park, the Aqueduct of Vanvitelli, and the San Leucio Complex

Charles of Bourbon, King of Naples, wanted a new court and seat of government away from his crowded, revolt-prone capital and safe from attack by sea. A palace at Caserta, 35 km north of Naples, was first proposed in 1750, and building began in 1752 under the architect Luigi Vanvitelli, with Versailles as the model; the people of Caserta Vecchia were moved 10 km to provide a workforce closer to the site. The palace is a rectangle of 247 by 190 m, with five floors, about 1,200 rooms and four inner courtyards. Vanvitelli died in 1773 and his son Carlo continued the work.

Water for its fountains came through the Caroline Aqueduct, 38 km long, begun in March 1753 and opened on 7 May 1762. It runs mostly underground, but where it crosses the Valle di Maddaloni it stands on three tiers of tufa arches, 529 m long and up to 55.8 m high. At San Leucio, Charles's son Ferdinand IV turned a royal hunting lodge into a silk works and gave the weavers homes, schools and medical care. In 1789 it became the Royal Colony of Silk Workers, but a plan to expand it into a city called Ferdinandopoli was halted by the French invasion of 1799.

An air raid in September 1943 struck the palace and destroyed almost all the paintings in its Palatine Chapel. From 1943 the palace housed Allied Force Headquarters for the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, and on 29 April 1945 the surrender of German forces in Italy was signed there. The palace, park, aqueduct and San Leucio were inscribed together as a World Heritage site in 1997.