The Acoustics of the Double Elliptical Vault of the Royal Palace of Caserta (Italy)

Abstract

This work investigates the acoustic characteristics of the double elliptical vault, which overlooks the Grand Staircase of the Royal Palace of Caserta (Italy). The Royal Palace was built by the architect Luigi Vanvitelli in the Seventeenth Century and it is the largest royal building in Italy. The double elliptical vault presents a great scenography effect. Inside the vault, on the planking level, musicians used to play for the king and his guests when the royal procession, going up the grand staircase, entered the royal apartments, creating astonishment among the guests who heard the music without understanding from where it was coming. Since the musicians were inside the vault, the long reverberation made the listeners perceive the vault to be enveloped by the music. To investigate this effect, the acoustic characteristics of the double vault were measured, putting the sound source on the planking level of the vault, while the microphones were put along the staircase and in the vestibule towards the royal apartments. Finally, the spatial distribution of several acoustic parameters is evaluated also using architectural acoustic simulations.

The acoustic characteristics of the “Dives in Misericordia” Church in Rome

“…Figure 5 shows the 3D virtual model created by the “Odeon” software; the sound source is placed on the altar and the receivers among the seats of the congregation. 15–17…”

“…Figure 5 shows the 3D virtual model created by the "Odeon" software; the sound source is placed on the altar and the receivers among the seats of the congregation. [15][16][17] The first operation is the acoustic model calibration. It consists of setting the absorbent coefficient values for all the virtual model surfaces and setting the scattering coefficients.…”

Acoustic Design of Ancient Buildings: The Odea of Pompeii and Posillipo

“…Subsequently, the virtual model was integrated with the roof in analogy to the drawings available in current literature and by Izenour books [29][30][31]. The architectural acoustics software is based on geometric acoustics principles with the tracking of sound rays technique [32][33][34]. This software uses the principles of the geometrical acoustics and adopts a hybrid calculation method that combines two classical methods, the image source method and the ray-tracing method.…”

Acoustic Enhancement of a Modern Church

“…40 AR (Denmark). MLS signals of order 16 with a length of 5 s were generated by a 01dB-Stell Symphonie system (France) [9]. While the acoustic measurements were taken, the church was empty and the furniture consisted of hard chairs only.…”