Europe's huge historic buildings part 2: the gigantic Palace of Caserta

It is grand. It was the main residence of the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.

Grand Staircase of Honour

Throne Room

It was built about 15 years after the Palacio Real de Madrid and both suffer in my eye from being royal palaces. Ducal and smaller palaces and large country houses make for better architecture on whole; they are scaled up large houses with exceptional detail, built to impress, certainly, but built with less theatre than royal palaces, particularly of the 18th Century and later.

The palaces at Caserta and Madrid are vast and theatrical: taking to great heights the procession of hierarchical spaces through which audiences advance to be received by a king or queen, with room after room after room, ante-chambers to ante-chambers as a giant measuring stick to declare the status of the visitor. The spaces are meant only to be passed through; the scale more than grand; and the effect less domestic than stage set - and it's the last that makes me less interested in seeing royal palaces than ducal houses or the grand houses of the filthy rich that are more relatable as domestic architecture (with exceptions, of course.)

The stair hall at Caserta is spectacular and brilliantly done. There are some other good spaces, certainly, but the vastness of the house, and more than that its style of pan-European (and Late) Baroque that for the most part would not seem too out of place in Prague or Stockholm or Berlin or Madrid that sends me looking for smaller houses (not royal palaces) with more exuberant architecture that is more of the geographical place. The royal palaces have all the flash, yet it's the houses of lesser status that are the real gems of architecture.

Excepting the stair hall, the architecture and the interiors at the palace in Madrid are better I think, owing in part to the edge of being those 15 years earlier and a bit stronger and more confident. It's difficult to warm to either, though, as their mission was to impress and even wear the viewer down with sheer size.

It's used a lot in filming as a stand in for the Vatican palace.