The return of Italy's royals

By David Willey BBC Rome correspondent

Princess Camilla and Prince Charles danced at gala dinner in Naples

After decades of living in exile, the descendants of Italy's former ruling royal houses are gingerly testing the waters of public opinion to see how the country reacts to their return.

I arrived to the sound of organ music wafting through the doors of the floodlit chapel in the gigantic Royal Palace, built 250 years ago by the Neapolitan Bourbons in a showy architectural attempt to outshine their French cousins at Versailles.

Thousands of candles lit the grand staircase and the chapel itself.

A gold robed Vatican cardinal carried out the actual christening of the four-month-old baby princess called Maria Carolina.

Two other Italian cardinals and three bishops officiated at the ceremony.

The parents, Prince Charles Bourbon and Princess Camilla who now divide their time between residences in Rome and Monte Carlo, invited 600 friends including several other former royals and members of European nobility to the christening.

There were the Saxe Coburg Gothas, and the Lichtensteins, and the Braganzas from Portugal and the Von Bismarcks from Germany.

Also present: a sprinkling of movie starlets, a formula one racing driver, and a swirl of fashion designers.

Chefs created a giant cake in the shape of Mount Vesuvius

Afterwards the stupendously decorated rooms of the palace were thrown open to the guests who strolled through the former royal apartments and dined off Neapolitan specialities washed down with the finest Italian wines.

Groups of strolling players entertained the guests and the champagne flowed generously for several hours.

My only complaint was the the Italian police and the family bodyguards had gobbled up all the journalists' food before we had a chance to taste it.

Anyway, the convivial scene of royalty dining in public was echoed in some of the historic paintings hung on the walls around us.

To end the banquet chefs carried in a cake weighing a 100 kg and a fabulous Neapolitan firework display went on until nearly two in the morning.

Turbulent history

The rule of the Bourbons was not a happy time for many Neapolitans.

The city - one of the great capitals of Europe - rose up in revolt against the monarchy in 1799.

That was only a few years after Marie Antoinette, the sister of the Queen of Naples, had had her head chopped off during the Paris revolution.

The terrified Bourbons were forced to flee to Sicily. Admiral Lord Nelson helped to transport them there.

When they finally returned to Naples the Bourbons behaved savagely, torturing and executing the best and the brightest of many Neapolitan families who had taken part in the revolution.

The Bourbons finally met their comeuppance when they were swept away by Garibaldi's troops.

New ways

The very word "Borbonic" has a pejorative meaning in modern Italian. It signifies corruption and inefficiency.

The modern Bourbons however are going out of their way to show that they have now mended their ways.

Times have changed... We are now friends, and here I am at the Bourbon party Emmanuel Filiberto of Savoy, whose family used to be rivals of the Bourbons

They publicise their work for charity. They even have a project among the homeless of London for which they proudly flourished a personal letter of thanks from Tony Blair, and went to considerable pains to stress that the bad old days had gone for ever.

A Neapolitan child from a poor family born on the same day as the newly christened princess was given a five thousand euro nest egg to mark the event.

I bumped into Emmanuel Filiberto of Savoy, the grandson of the King who ruled the whole of Italy, not just the Kingdom of Naples, during Fasicst times, and asked him about the animosity which used to exist between the two former Italian rival royal families.

"Oh, times have changed", he replied. "We are now friends, and here I am at the Bourbon party."

Political ambitions?

Until this year direct male descendants of the House of Savoy were banned by law from entering Italy.

So, what was the political significance then, of this lavish display to celebrate the birth of the first Italian Princess on Italian soil for more than a century?

All the former Italian royals I have spoken to deny they have any political ambitions.

Yet they must remember that a big majority of Neapolitans voted in favour of retaining the monarchy in the referendum which decided that Italy should become a republic after the fall of Fascism.

In an Italy now ruled by the media king, Silvio Berlusconi, under a centre-right coalition, royal nostalgia could strengthen right-wing politics in the depressed south of Italy.

A huge economic gap still separates the territories of the former Kingdom of Naples from the industrially advantaged and much more prosperous North of Italy.

---

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 8 November, 2003, at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.

---