One Building, Many Stories. Palazzo de Gregorio in Caserta from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day

Abstract

The essay explores the origins and the many transformations of palazzo de Gregorio, located in Caserta behind the gardens of the Bourbon royal palace.
Built by Charles of Bourbon, at his own expense, in 1754 for the Marquis of Squillace Leopoldo de Gregorio by the royal architect Luigi Vanvitelli, it was purchased by Ferdinand IV in 1796 to house the kingdom’s first Flanders linen factory. Later transformed into a cotton mill by Luigi Vallin in the French Decade, it continued to be used as a factory even after the return of the Bourbons. The palace later passed to the military in 1851, at the behest of Ferdinand II, who strengthened the defensive functions of S. Maria Capua Vetere and Caserta in support of Capua and was finally sold to private individuals at the end of the 19th century. After World War II, it was requisitioned by the Housing Commission and granted to the homeless to solve housing problems. In tracing its many ‘lives’, the essay, in its conclusions, will also try to touch on some aspects which are more directly related to its protection, since the current state of conservation of the building solicits questions concerning the relationship between history, memory, identity and what materially survives of it, all of which no longer reflect what it has represented at individual moments in its long history