Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte — Attraction in Naples

It is a great shame. Having visited a great number of major museums all over the world, I was shocked to see the level of neglect and disdain in this museum. It is run by a Mr. Bellenger since 2015. I will put my comments in points: 1/ About one half of the whole exhibition area is closed (the whole Royal Apartment plus 20 rooms of the picture gallery). However, there is not a single word about the closure on the website (as of 11/26/2021). You only find out about it in small print on a piece of paper at the ticket office. No information is provided as to when the Royal Apartment will be opened again. Now, if you close about 40 rooms in a Palace for a “reinstallation”, do you really not know beforehand when it will be closed and until when? Does the museum have no plan? And why does the museum not communicate it on their website? If this is not an evident example of totally failed management, I don’t know what is. 2/ Covid pass was not checked. The attendants do not wear masks or wear them below the nose only. When you leave the museum, there is a special attendant that shouts at you that you must go outside and cannot return to the cloakroom through the ticket office because of covid regulations. Funnily enough the person does not wear a mask himself! 3/ Visiting the museum is a bit like a game; there’re 3 different sections that have different opening times and each section has a different closing time and a different last entry time. Why? In Europe, museums have an opening time and a closing time. Why do you need 6 different times in Italy? It seems the museum isn’t here for the visitor really. 4/ Now there’s something I only saw in Naples. The museum attendants everywhere in Europe keep silent and guard the rooms. Not so in Naples. Here, three or even more meet up in one room and start chatting noisily like in a bar. They don’t care about the exhibits or the visitors, it’s sharing the hot new gossip that matters most. 5/ It’s standard that a museum website has its English version. But if you want to find information in English on the Capodimonte website, you need to click through the whole menu until under the last option of “info utili” you try the last choice of “useful information”. Voila, here the last option in the last option is English. Also, almost no signs in the museum are in English or any other world language. This really doesn't make you feel welcome in the museum. 6/ If you complain at the ticket office that a substantial part of the place is closed down with no notice on the website, they become rather arrogant. First of all, they lie that it is on the website. When you prove them wrong, they say you can fill a complaints form. They go searching for the form, but in the end they’re unable to find it and just start ignoring you. Absolutely no word of excuse. 7/ The conservation of the site is extremely poor. From Belvedere you can notice the two ugly modern glass “sheds” on the roof, which spoil the Baroque architecture. The part for the contemporary art exhibition is also totally inappropriate and not befitting an 18th century palace. Also, we could see how they “renovated” the windows. The new windows were left uncovered on the courtyard to soak up the rain (it rains heavily almost every day in November). Finally new windows are fitted in using PUR foam! North of the Alps, arms would be cut off for this kind of “heritage preservation”. Also, the paintings are very badly lit. Why don’t they just go to KHM in Vienna to ask how to do it properly or hire some experts from Europe? I’m really afraid the problem is EU subsidy. There are millions of Euro flowing into Capodimonte and that’s huge temptation. And Naples is not a city of saints. All in all, I can’t think of a museum I would be more...

My experience at the Capodimonte Museum on September 15th was highly disappointing. I aim to provide an accurate and objective account of my visit.

I arrived at the museum's second floor at approximately 3:00 PM. Around 3:25 PM, I was informed that this floor would close at 4:00 PM and the floor contains a total of 45 rooms, but I was also told it would reopen for an additional hour from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM. I assumed that I could explore some rooms during the first session and return to see the rest during the second session. However, I noticed a staff member already ushering visitors out of the rooms at only 3:30 PM. I asked her whether they were closing rooms. She reassured me that the floor would indeed close at 4:00 PM. I was happy and continued my visit at a leisurely pace.

Despite this reassurance, within the next 15 minutes, I was reminded at least three times by different staff members that the floor would close at 4:00 PM and that there were many rooms still to explore. Feeling rushed, I finally said, "I fully understand you will close at 4:00 PM. I'd like to stay here longer, but I'll skip the rooms ahead." At this point, a staff member got upset and told me, "You must respect the rules of this floor! We are closing! You must leave this room now!" It was only 3:47 PM at the time.

To summarize their expectations : Visitors must go through all 45 rooms within an hour. If you wish to focus on some rooms and return to see the rest during another session, this is not allowed. You have to follow their pace, allowing just a few minutes per room.

It’s a shame that visitors are treated this way. If these are indeed the museum's policies, they should be explicitly stated at the entrance. This would prevent any misunderstandings / conflicts and allow potential visitors to make an informed decision before...

This museum has fine collection of art from the 13th through early 19th century. The museum is located in a large well kept park, and there is an overlook near the exit of the museum that give a nice view of the city below and the bay of Naples. It takes about an hour to get to the museum from the center of Naples using public transportation (take metro Line 1 to Pizza Dante, exit to the street and to your right a few hundred feet is a bus stop, take the c63 to Capodimonte, get off at the main gate). The palace was built specifically as a private museum to house the royal collection. For a period later on, the monarch also lived in the palace. Becasue it not in the center of the city, and a bit time consuming to get to it does not get as crowded as a major museum of this type otherwise would. Also, I did not encounter the screaming hoards of school groups that were in all the other museums I visited in Naples (and elsewhere in Europe). Like most museums in Italy, the are unscheduled closures of sections of the museum whenever they feel like it, so don't expect to see everything described in a tourist guide. When I visited in March (2018) the ground floor and below ground exhibit rooms were all closed for renovations. The other floors were all mostly open, except the royal apartments as well as the displays of armour and weapons were closed. A security camera system was being upgraded during visiting hours rather that on the day of closure (Wed.) or after hours! You just have to be flexible in Italy. Maybe you will get to see what you are looking for on your trip, and maybe you won't! I had to wait 40 minutes for a bus to show up for the return...