Royal Palace of Caserta

Italy's answer to Versailles, and larger. The Bourbon kings of Naples built the Reggia in the 18th century to rival any court in Europe: some 1,200 rooms, a staircase designed to overwhelm, and a garden canal running three kilometres straight to a cascade fed from mountains far away by a purpose-built aqueduct. The architect Vanvitelli barely lived to see it topped out. Too vast ever to be cosy, it later stood in for the palaces of Naboo and other fictional seats of power on film. Power expressed as sheer, exhausting scale.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.