Palazzo Serra di Cassano

This guide to Palazzo Serra di Cassano in Naples centers on Gennaro Serra, a duke's twenty-seven-year-old son raised on Enlightenment ideas, who took command of the National Guard when Naples briefly became a republic in 1799. It follows the royalist army that crushed that republic within months and the truce under which Gennaro surrendered, before turning to his parents, Duke Luigi Serra di Cassano and Giulia Carafa, and the decision they made about the grand stone portal facing the king's own palace. Ferdinando Sanfelice, the architect who designed that portal, built it as a carriage-height entrance on Via Egiziaca. Stand across the street to take in the full scale of the sealed doorway.