entry
Sept 2013
The Royal Bourbon Hunting Grounds at Licola
Licola today is a beach community that starts just to the north of the Cuma hill (a few miles north of the Bay of Pozzuoli) and extends for about 10 km northwards. It is a strip of territory about 3 km wide. Today it is divided administratively into two parts: Licola Centro (or Borgo) and Licola Lido (beach). The name Licola derives from follicole, a dialect form of follaghe—Fulica atra—the crane-like bird known commonly as the coot. Licola Borgo contains what is left of the buildings that were the center of the Royal Hunting Grounds of Licola. It is on the list of the so-called 22 Royal Bourbon sites, properties of the royals ranging from large palaces to smaller hunting grounds such as this one. (The complete list is shown in the box on the right.)
The dovecote and stables on the
Royal Hunting Grounds at Licola
Royal Hunting Grounds at Licola
The first mention of such buildings at Licola
goes back only to 1804 under Ferdinand IV. It is,
thus, well past the great age of Bourbon sites
initiated by the king’s father, Charles III, who abdicated
to return to Spain in 1759. There is however,
documentation of that area up to and including Lago Patria a few miles
farther north being used by the Bourbons for hunting
as early the 1740s. At the time of the Bourbons
(1734-1860) the area was still a swampy body of water
called Lake Licola, later dried up as part of a land
reclamation project. Although documentation from 1804
exists as to the ongoing construction of the grounds
for Ferdinand IV, there are no records, as far as I
know, as to what happened to the project a few months
later when French forces invaded the kingdom and
Ferdinand was forced to flee to Sicily. My guess is
that the site was used sparingly under the French
decade of Murat and
subsequent Bourbon years after the restoration (1815).
There is no special record of how it was used after
the unification of Italy (1860).The former hunting lodge/residence and adjacent out-buildings are substantially intact and still standing, although degraded. The main building today serves as the seat of a local environmental protection agency. The premises were “royally large” —that is, with a main residence, a chapel, stables and servants quarters, but otherwise in simple limestone construction and undistinguished as an architectural landmark.
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