🛀 Interesting Facts about the bidet kept in the royal palace of Caserta 👑

👑 The Golden Age of Hygiene: The "Guitar-Shaped" Bidet of Caserta's Queen🛀

👑  In the second half of the 18th century, Maria Carolina of Habsburg-Lorraine, Queen of Naples, installed a bidet in her private bathroom at the Royal Palace of Caserta. It is one of the first known examples in Italy.

✨ Precious and refined materials

Made of fine mahogany and a gilded bronze inner basin, the bidet reflected the refined taste of the court and the desire to follow the fashions of the great European courts, such as the French.

🧐 Prejudices and modernity

At the time, the bidet was associated with prostitution and considered a controversial object.

Queen Maria Carolina was warned that it could damage her reputation, being a "prostitute's instrument," but she ignored the advice, prioritizing personal hygiene.

🧐 Misunderstanding

After the unification of Italy, it is said that Savoy officials, while carrying out the inventory of the Royal Property, found the unknown object: they described it as a "strange object in the shape of a guitar."

📜 A symbol of advanced hygiene

The Bourbons, at the time, demonstrated an advanced mentality regarding personal hygiene, equipping the Palace with a real bathroom with a granite bathtub (initially with only cold water), a Carrara marble toilet, and, of course, a bidet.

🧐 Historical context

Bidet has French origins dating back to the 17th century and was initially associated with intimate and contraceptive use in aristocratic homes. However, its diffusion in Italy only occurred more significantly after the Second World War.

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