The palace was constructed on its somewhat cooler hilltop location (Capodimonte means "top of the hill") just outside the city, with urban Naples ultimately expanding around it.

Work started in August 1738,[1] but it was to take more than a century to complete, partly because of the difficulty of transporting piperno, the volcanic rock used, from the quarries in Pianura.

Its sober articulation adheres more closely to Herrerian monuments in Spain and the output of the royal military engineer and architect Giovanni Antonio Medrano.

Architectural borrowing was never neutral, and at Capodimonte such features harmonized the palace with other royal buildings, thus casting it as a member of a close-knit family of crown structures.

In 1759, Ferdinand IV succeeded his father Charles and the following year he appointed the architect Ferdinando Fuga to oversee work on the palace and the grounds.

When the Parthenopaean Republic was declared in 1799, Ferdinand fled to Palermo on board Nelson's Vanguard, taking the most valuable items from the palace with him.

With Italian Unification, the royal palace passed in 1861 to the House of Savoy who used it as a residence and also added to the art collections, appointing Domenico Morelli as consultant for new acquisitions.