When you stand in front of the Reggia Caserta palace, you immediately realize that this is a palace of a truly grand scale. The square building, with rectangular and symmetrical design, imposes from a distance. Once you get inside, you are overwhelmed by the size of columns, the height of the ceilings, the royal stairs. It is possible to visit parts of the palace. This allows you to see the halls where the king discussed with his advisors, his bed, the queen's bed, and several other king-size function halls.

The style of the palace is baroque, which means that in almost every room the heavy baroque elements come down on the visitor. Enormous lamps, excessively decorated ceilings, gold used everywhere - it is sometimes hard to believe people actually could have liked to live in such a surrounding. There are even rooms with walls and furniture all in the same colour. The only part I liked was the library, with special book cupboards and a beautiful representation of the world, surrounded with astrological signs around it.

The real attraction for me were the huge gardens. It takes no less than 3 kilometres to reach the end of the garden. This is a mostly uphill walk, which takes you past ponds, fountains, statues and stairs. If you want, you can rent a bike or even go in a minibus, but of course you lose out a little from the experience of the gardens. From above, you have a good view over the gardens and the palace itself. Even the fish in the ponds is enormous. From there, you can enter the English gardens which most visitors don't do, so you can walk around in peace before the long walk back to the palace.