Naples - entrance to the villa reale (then national, and today villa comunale) from piazza vittoria. Author unknown. The entrance to the villa was characterized by two low symmetrical "casini", designed by vanvitelli in 1778, and built before 1791 (the year of a painting by lusieri in which they already appear). They were separated by a gate with two sentry boxes for the sentries who guarded and regulated access to the villa itself, and mainly housed refreshment areas. Vanvitelli's pavilions were a masterpiece of architectural elegance: in neoclassical style, on a single level, they presented "three arches and four pairs of pilasters with regular ashlars, alternating with the usual rhythmic beam, with rectangular niches". Allow the descent to the sea reserved for the customers of the café, so much so that the casino on the vittoria side was equipped with a wooden staircase which from the inside led directly to the beach a few meters below the level of the villa. The vanvitellian casinos were demolished in 1872, when the construction work on via caracciolo began, and in their place the current low iron gate punctuated by marble statues was placed. Date: between 1865 and 1870.
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