Short answers, pulled from the story.
The origins of the Museo di Capodimonte trace back to 1738, when King Charles VII of Naples and Sicily decided to build a grand palace on the Capodimonte hill partly to house the Farnese Collection. The museum was formally inaugurated in 1957.
The Farnese Collection is a body of classical, mostly Roman, monumental sculpture inherited by King Charles VII from his mother Elisabetta Farnese, the last descendant of the sovereign ducal family of Parma. Much of it is displayed on the ground floor of the museum, with additional pieces at the Naples National Archaeological Museum.
The National Gallery at Capodimonte holds works by Caravaggio, Raphael, Titian, El Greco, Giovanni Bellini, Simone Martini, Masaccio, Lorenzo Lotto, Giorgio Vasari, and Jacob Philipp Hackert, among others. The museum is also the leading institution for paintings of the Neapolitan School, with strong holdings of Jusepe de Ribera and Luca Giordano.
When the Parthenopaean Republic was declared in 1799, King Ferdinand IV fled to Palermo on Nelson's Vanguard with the most valuable items. French troops under General Jean Etienne Championnet looted what remained. During the subsequent nine years of French reoccupation (1806-1815), the art collection was transferred to the Naples National Archaeological Museum.
The Palace of Capodimonte was designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano. Construction began in 1738 under King Charles VII of Naples and Sicily, who needed a residence large enough to house his court and the Farnese Collection.
In 2022, art dealer Lia Rumma donated more than seventy works by thirty prominent Italian artists to the Italian government for display at Capodimonte. The donation included works by Vincenzo Agnetti, Giovanni Anselmo, Enrico Castellani, Luciano Fabro, and Michelangelo Pistoletto.