NationMaster - Encyclopedia: San Leucio resort

In 1750 Charles VII of Naples selected this place for an unusual social and tecnological experiment, a different model of production based on technical innovation and alert to the needs of workers. In the first time San Leucio resort was a place for pleasure and a reserve of hunt of the crown, providing of an aqueduct to bring water to the waterfalls of the Royal Caserta Palace. The beloved son of Charles, Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies preferred to take refuge here, in hunting lodge built for him. He was a very skilful hunter who disliked the pleasures and luxury of the court life: here Charles and the young king Ferdinand built and set up a factory to make silk cloths. The complex was transformed into a palace for silk-works and extended in an industrial buildings, a unique case in late 18th century in Europe. Mr. Francesco Collecini, Architect, planned these industrial buildings where the noisy looms were installed next to the royal apartments and a salon was used to make a church for the workers. Spanish forces had placed him on the Neapolitan Throne and he was surrounded by Spanish advisers or men whose dislike of the Habsburg Viceroys administering their state on behalf of an absentee Sovereign, had led them to support the Spanish invasion and the accession of Charles as their King. ... View from the gardens on Caserta Caserta Palace, near Naples was certainly the largest palace and probably the largest building erected in Europe in the 18th century. ... King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies (January 12, 1751 - January 4, 1825). ...

After a new village had to be built for the workers, a large community of silk weavers grew into this industrial town and in 1789 it was called the "Real Colonia dei Setaioli" (the Silk Weavers Royal Colony), also called "Ferdinandopoli". Here there were the most advanced technologies used throughout the process to obtein the finished products of the 18th century in Europe.

The heritage of King Ferdinand still survives today in the local silk and textile firms, they work on an international scale to elite foreign clients as the Buckingam Palace, the White House, the Quirinale Palace, the Palazzo Chigi.

Today in San Leucio resort there is a living Silk Museum with some original old looms and machinery restored and displaied inside the Belvedere, showing all the phases of silk productions, from the old looms and machinery to finished products.

Now San Leucio resort is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in Europe as part of the 18th Century Royal Palace at Caserta with the Park, the Aqueduct of Vanvitelli and the San Leucio Complex.

World Heritage Sites in Italy

Aeolian Islands | Aquileia | Archaeological Area of Agrigento | Archaeological Areas of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata | Franciscan Sites of Assisi | Botanical Garden, Padua | Caserta Palace and Related Monuments | Castel del Monte | Cilento and Vallo di Diano with Paestum and Velia | Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan | Costiera Amalfitana | Crespi d'Adda | Etruscan Necropoli of Cerveteri and Tarquinia | Ferrara and its Po Delta | Florence | Palaces of Genoa | I Sassi di Matera | Modena: Cathedral, Torre Civica and Piazza Grande | Sicilian Baroque of Val di Noto | Historic Centre of Naples | Piazza del Duomo, Pisa | Pienza | Portovenere, Cinque Terre, Tino | Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna | Residences of the Royal House of Savoy | Rock Drawings in Valcamonica | Rome (w/ Holy See) | Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy | San Gimignano | Siena | Su Nuraxi di Barumini | Syracuse with Pantalica | Trulli of Alberobello | Urbino | Val d'Orcia | Venice and its Lagoon | Verona | Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto | Villa Adriana (Tivoli) | Villa d'Este, Tivoli | Villa Romana del Casale Image File history File links Flag_of_Italy. ... Elabana Falls is in Lamington National Park, part of the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves World Heritage site in Queensland, Australia. ... The Aeolian Islands. ... Aquileia (Friulian Aquilee, Slovene Oglej) is an ancient Roman town of Italy, at the head of the Adriatic at the edge of the lagoons, about 10 km from the sea, on the river Natiso (modern Natisone), the course of which has changed somewhat since Roman times. ... Agrigento (formerly Girgenti) is the name of a town on the southern coast of Italy, capital of the province of Agrigento. ... A computer-generated depiction of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 which buried Pompeii, from the BBCs Pompeii: The Last Day Pompeii is a ruined Roman city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the commune of Pompei. ... Herculaneum (in modern Italian Ercolano) was an ancient Roman town, located in the territory of the current commune of Ercolano. ... Torre Annunziata, population 52,875 (1991), is a city in the province of Naples, region of Campania in Italy. ... Crest of the township (comune) of Assisi Assisi (Latin: Asisium) is a town and episcopal see in Italy in Perugia province, Italy, in the Umbria region, on the western flank of Mt. ... The Botanical Garden of Padova (or Garden of the Simples) in a 16th century print; in the background, the Basilica of SantAntonio. ... View from the gardens on Caserta Caserta Palace, near Naples was certainly the largest palace and probably the largest building erected in Europe in the 18th century. ... Castel del Monte. ... Paestum overview. ... Velia is an ancient town of Lucania (present Basilicata), Italy, on the hill now crowned by the medieval castle of Castellainmare della Bruca, 440 ft. ... Santa Maria delle Grazie is a Renaissance church in Milan built by Guiniforte Solari between 1466 and 1490 on a commission by Dominican monks. ... The Amalfi Coast The Amalfi Coast, or Costiera Amalfitana in Italian, is a stretch of coastline on the southern side of the Sorrentine Peninsula of Italy (Province of Salerno) extending from Positano in the west to Vietri sul Mare in the east. ... The Crespi factory Crespi dAdda is a worker village in Italy founded in the 19th century. ... A small town located approximately 60 miles N of Rome. ... Tarquinia, formerly Corneto and in Antiquity Tarquinii, is an ancient city in the province of Viterbo, Lazio, Italy. ... Ferrara is a city in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, capital city of the province of Ferrara. ... Florences skyline Florences skyline at night from Piazza Michaelangelo Florence (Italian: ) is the capital city of the region of Tuscany, Italy. ... Genoa (Genova in Italian - Zena in Genoese) is a city and a seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. ... A street corner in the ancient Sassi di Matera as it looks today. ... Modena (MÃ²dna in Modenese dialect) is a city and a province on the south side of the Po valley, in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. ... The Cathedrals faÃ§ade The Duomo (Cathedral) of Modena, in Italy, is one of the most outstanding Romanesque building of Europe and has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. ... Illustration 1: Sicilian Baroque. ... Val di Noto (English: Valley of Noto) is a geographical area of south east Sicily; it is dominated by the limestone Iblean plateau. ... The Bay of Naples Naples (Italian: , Neapolitan: NÃ pule, from Greek ÎÎµÎ¬Ï€Î¿Î»Î· < ÎÎÎ± Î ÏŒÎ»Î¹Ï‚ NÃ©a PÃ³lis New City) is the largest city in southern Italy and capital of the Campania region and the Province of Naples. ... The Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles) is a wide, walled area at the heart of the city of Pisa, Tuscany, Italy (, ), recognized as one of the main centers for Mediaeval art in the world. ... Pienza is town and commune in the province of Siena, in the Val dOrcia in Tuscany (central Italy), between the towns of Montepulciano and Montalcino. ... Portovenere is a village in Liguria, Italy located 12km from La Spezia. ... Manarola, one of the five coastal villages in the National Park of the Cinque Terre. ... Tino The Italian island of Tino is situated in the Ligurian Sea, at the westernmost end of the Gulf of La Spezia. ... Ravenna is a city and commune in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. ... The Residences of the Royal House of Savoy is a World Heritage Site in the Province of Torino, Italy (1997), which includes the following patrimonies: Palazzo Carignano. ... Val Camonica is a valley in the lower Alpine regions of Lombardy, Italy. ... Nickname: The Eternal City Motto: SPQR: Senatus PopulusQue Romanus Location of the city of Rome (yellow) within the Province of Rome (red) and region of Lazio (grey) Coordinates: Region Lazio Province Province of Rome Founded 21 April 753 BC Mayor Walter Veltroni Area - City 1285 kmÂ² (580 sq mi) - Urban... The Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy are a World Heritage site in Northern Italy. ... San Gimignano. ... Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. ... Su Nuraxi, Barumini, Sardinia Central tower of the Nuraghe at Saint Antine of Torralba Su Nurraxi. ... Map of central Mediterranean Sea, showing location of Syracuse on the island of Sicily. ... The Necropolis of Pantalica is a large necropolis in Sicily with about 5000 tombs dating from the 13th to the 7th centuries BC. Pantalica is situated in the valleys of the rivers Anapo and Calcinara, between the towns of Ferla and Sortino in south-eastern Sicily. ... Trulli roofs from Alberobello. ... Alberobello is a small town in the province of Bari, in Puglia, Italy. ... Panorama of Urbino with the cathedral and the palazzo ducale Urbino is a city in the Marche in Italy, southwest of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site with a great cultural history during the Renaissance as the seat of Federico da Montefeltro. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... Venice (Italian: Venezia, Venetian: Venexia) is the capital of the Italian regions and has a population of 271,663 (census estimate January 1, 2004). ... Verona is an ancient town, episcopal see, and province in Veneto, Northern Italy. ... Vicenza is a city in northern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monti Berici, straddling the Bacchiglione. ... City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto is a cluster of works by Andrea Palladio and his disciples which were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1994 and expanded two years later. ... The villas recreation of Canopus, a resort near Alexandria, as seen from the temple of Serapis Theatrical masks of Tragedy and Comedy in refined mosaic, from the villa (Capitoline Museum, Rome) The Villa of the Emperor Hadrian at Tivoli, Italy, even in ruined condition is one of the most... Park of the Villa dEste, Carl Blechen, 1830 The gardens at the Villa dEste The Villa dEste is a masterpiece of Italian architecture and garden design. ... The Villa Romana del Casale is an excavated Roman villa containing some of the best examples of Roman mosaics in their original settings in the world. ...