The viceroy Fernando Ruiz de Castro, count of Lemos, and his wife Catalina de Zúñiga decided to raise a new palace in honour of king Philip III of Habsburg, to lodge him ahead of an imminent visit. The king of Spain never came to Naples. The first stone was laid in 1600, at the western end of the city, set against the hill of Pizzofalcone and commanding the harbour: a scenic choice, but a practical one too, since in case of attack that harbour would have made an excellent escape route for the king.
What to see
The design went to Domenico Fontana, then reckoned the most prestigious architect in the western world and chief engineer of the Kingdom; he was the same man who had worked in Rome for Sixtus V, and on that pope's death had fallen into disgrace. Naples was his comeback, and it shows: on two columns of the front he had his own name carved, calling himself inventor. The layout is late Renaissance, with a central courtyard and a loggia on the first floor, conceived as a building for display rather than a fortified residence, with a square in front wide enough for parades and gatherings.
Visiting
What you see is not what was drawn. In Fontana's design, on the seaward side, there was to be a C-shaped block: only the western side was built, the eastern arm was never raised, and the central part was completed only in 1843. The original solution was so admired that in the prints of the time the palace was shown as designed rather than as it really was, while the site was still open. The same complex includes the gardens, the National Library and the Teatro di San Carlo.
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The building site moved at the pace of the viceroys. Under the count of Lemos and his successor the work ran; then, with Juan Alonso Pimentel de Herrera, it slowed, perhaps for want of money after Spain's wars and crises, perhaps as a matter of honour, given how little interest there was in finishing something begun by predecessors. The palace outlived them all anyway: the Spanish and then Austrian viceroys, the Bourbons, the French decade and finally the Savoy, until in 1919 Victor Emmanuel III handed it over to the state. It was built for a guest who never arrived, and ended up housing everybody else.