Royal Palace (Turin)

Facade of the palace

The Royal Palace (Italian: Palazzo Reale ) in Turin , the northern Italian city, which since 1563 capital of Savoy and Piedmont was, is a city closed the 17th century.

history

It was built for Christina of France , who took over the reign of the Duchy of Savoy after the death of her husband Viktor Amadeus I. The four-wing complex was built from 1646 according to plans by Amadeo di Castellamonte instead of a former bishop's palace previously used as a residence on the north side of today's Piazza Reale . The facade of 1658 dates from the time when the castle, which was repeatedly structurally altered, was used by the rulers (from 1720 kings) from the House of Savoy until 1865 . The main courtyard in front of the city-side facade is flanked by two low wings. The right wing (1738 based on a design by Juvarra) houses the armeria , an important collection of weapons. The square is closed by an iron grating from 1837 with gateposts on which the Dioscuri , bronze sculptures by Abbondio Sangiorgio  from 1846, face each other.

The interior was lavishly furnished and enriched between the 17th and 19th centuries. A monumental staircase from 1865 leads to the first floor ( piano nobile ), into the private rooms above the much-visited double-barreled Scala delle Forbici ( scissor staircase), a work by Filippo Juvarra from 1720. The inventory of the publicly accessible state rooms includes furniture, tapestries and a collection of Far Eastern porcelain, the latter exhibited in the Chinese Salon (gabinetto cinese) , which was also designed by Juvarra.

Adjacent to the palace and with direct access is the Shroud Chapel of the Turin Cathedral , where the most precious devotional objects that the House of Savoy owned until 1983 were kept. On the east side of the square, the Armeria Reale joins the former royal arms collection, the focus of its holdings is on the 16th to 19th centuries.

The Biblioteca Reale also belongs to the castle district . The small remains of the park with a triton fountain from the middle of the 18th century, designed by the great French garden architect André Le Nôtre in 1697, date from the beginning of the construction period .

The building was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997 as the former residence of the House of Savoy . Since 2014 it has housed the city's most important collection of paintings, the Galleria Sabauda .

literature

• Sabine Becht: Piedmont & Aosta Valley. Michel Müller, Erlangen 2011, pp. 98–99.
• Ida Leinberger and Walter Pippke: Piemont and Aostatal (= DuMont art travel guide ). Ostfildern 2013, pp. 175–177.
• Heinz Schomann: Piedmont, Liguria, Aosta Valley. Art monuments and museums (= Reclams Art Guide. Vol. 1,2). Reclam, Stuttgart 1982, pp. 438-443.

Web links

Commons : Royal Palace (Turin)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Palazzo Reale on visitatorino.com (English, with a detailed description of the individual rooms)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Before the chapel was built and since the fire in 1997 it has been kept in the cathedral again.

Coordinates: 45 ° 4 ′ 21.7 ″  N , 7 ° 41 ′ 9.6 ″  E