Portici Royal Palace - Private Tour

The Royal Palace of Portici is among the most splendid examples in Europe of the summer residence of the Bourbon royal family and its court. Located on the slopes of Vesuvius, it has an upper forest, originally dedicated to hunting, and a downstream, more ornamental type, extended to the sea.

The Palace was built in 1738 at the behest of the King of Naples, Charles of Bourbon, for landscape reasons and for the resources suitable for hunting, turned out to be deeply steeped in buried memories: at every excavation of the earth, necessary for the construction of new buildings, some wonder of the past re-emerged into the light. The finds, coming from the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, proved to be rich and numerous and were placed in the rooms of the Palace. Soon the finds formed one of the most famous collections in the world and gave life to the Herculanense Museum, inaugurated in 1758 and privileged destination of the Grand Tour. To access the Royal Palace from the sea, in 1773 the port of Granatello was built.

On 3 October 1839 a railway line was inaugurated, the first in Europe, which connected the Palace to Naples.