18th-Century Royal Palace at Caserta with the Park, the Aqueduct of Vanvitelli, and the San Leucio Complex

Charles III of Bourbon wanted a rival to Versailles and Madrid, and at Caserta in the mid-18th century he got one: a magnificent palace joined to park, gardens and natural woodland, with hunting lodges, the Vanvitelli aqueduct and the silk-factory settlement of San Leucio. The ensemble reads as the Enlightenment in material form, worked into its setting rather than imposed upon it. UNESCO inscribed the Caserta complex in 1997.