Palace of Venaria

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The Palace of Venaria (Italian: Reggia di Venaria Reale) is a former royal residence and gardens located in Venaria Reale, near the city of Turin in the Piedmont region in northern Italy. It is one of the 14 Residences of the Royal House of Savoy built in the area between the 16th and 18th centuries which were collectively designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The palace was designed and built from 1675 by Amedeo di Castellamonte, commissioned by Duke Charles Emmanuel II, who needed a base for his hunting expeditions in the heathy hill country north of Turin. The name itself derives from the Latin phrase Venatio Regia meaning "Royal Hunt". It was later enlarged to become a luxurious residence for the House of Savoy. During that time, the palace complex became a masterpiece of Baroque architecture and was filled with decoration and artwork. It fell into disuse at the end of the 18th century. After the Napoleonic Wars, it was used for military purposes until 1978, when its renovation began, leading to the largest restoration project in European history. It finally opened to the public on October 13, 2007, and it has since become a major tourist attraction and exhibition space...

Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy (1634–1675) was inspired by the earlier Castle of Mirafiori ( Italian : Castello di Mirafiori ), built by Duke Charles Emmanuel I (1562–1630) for his wife Catalina Micaela of Spain (1567–1597) in what is today the southern suburb of Turin.

Keen to leave a memorial dedicated to himself and his wife, Marie Jeanne Baptiste of Savoy-Nemours (1644–1724), Charles Emmanuel II bought two small villages just north of the city, Altessano Superiore and Altessano Inferiore, from the landowner family Birago of Milanese origin, who had used the land for farming. The place was renamed Venaria for its future function as a hunting lodge ( Venatio in Latin). The construction of this residence was part of the larger plan of building the so-called "Garland of Delights" ( Corona di Delizie ), a chain of palaces and leisure residences around Turin, which also included the hunting lodge of Stupinigi, the Castle of Rivoli, the Queen's Villa, and others.

In 1658 Charles Emmanuel II commissioned the project to build the palace and a small town around it to the architect Amedeo di Castellamonte, whose father Carlo was the chief architect of Charles Emmanuel I and whose work had popularized Piedmontese Baroque.

The ambitious plan envisioned a grandiose complex including the palace, gardens, hunting woods, and also a new town, with scenic vistas. The new town's plan had a circular layout, imitating the round shape of the collar of the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, a dynastic order created by the House of Savoy. Construction began in 1659, and under the direction of Castellamonte work proceeded steadily, starting with the horse stable and the clock tower built in 1660.

Venaria Reale was much more than a hunting-palace, and must be viewed as an experimentation in urban planning transferred to the countryside, with the realization of a town attached to the residential complex by linear axes opening up into curved public spaces, the focal point of one of which was the church of Sant'Uberto, patron saint of the hunt. This organization was reported to have influenced Louis XIV ’s thinking in 1669 about the future development of Versailles. Palace, church, and town operated as an integrated architectural and social unit, a miniature ideal city based on the notion of the princely hunt and the representation of the Duke as master of the natural world, frequently depicted on horseback as a classical emblem of sovereign authority.

The iconography of Venaria Reale was more than formalistic, and the decoration of the palace complex itself had been carefully plotted out by Emanuele Tesauro, the resident Jesuit savant at the court, who was frequently employed to devise iconographic programmes for decorative schemes. His celebration of the princely hunt was realized by a group of painters and stuccoists who came to play dominant roles in Charles-Emanuel’s patronage.

The Palace of Diana ( Reggia di Diana ), functioning as the central part of the palace intended to house the duke and the court, was built in several phases: it was first constructed on two levels with short side loggias, and then subsequently raised by adding two more floors, with the top floor intended as a belvedere, between 1660 and 1663. It was then further modified with the addition of smaller apartments considered more suitable for privacy compared to the halls and parade chambers of the central area of the palace.

The building was further expanded with the creation of pavilions facing the gardens in 1669, and then additional pavilions which close off the courtyards on both sides of the palace in 1671. The façade was built with a loggia on the first floor flanked by grand arched entrances, the left one of which was subsequently destroyed during the renovations led by Michelangelo Garove a few decades later. The palace layout denotes the influence of late 16th-century Roman works, such as the Villa Borghese gardens and Villa Mondragone.

Castellamonte also built the loggia and theater in the upper garden (1666), the square in front of the palace (1667), the twin façades of the churches in the town square (1669), the orangery and the Fountain of Hercules (1671), the Temple of Diana in the gardens (1673), as well as the porticos of the town's main street (1679). The entire complex is connected together along the straight axis that cut across the town and reaches the palace, follows the canal, and then leads to the Fountain of Hercules and finally the Temple of Diana in the gardens.

After the French army had destroyed some of the buildings on 1 October 1693, fighting against Savoy during the Nine Years' War, Duke of Savoy and the future King of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus II (1666–1732), decided to reconstruct the residence according to French style of the time, to rival the famous Palace of Versailles. Starting in 1699, he gave the project to the architect Michelangelo Garove [ it ], who proceeded to build an even more grandiose palace.

Garove's plan included a complete re-imagining of the palace according to contemporary standards. The Palace of Diana would now be flanked by two enormous wings to the north and south, with pavilions at each end. He also constructed the south-west pavilion (1702), the south-east pavilion (1703–13) and also began works on the Great Gallery in between, which remained unfinished by the time of his death in 1713. The two pavilions, connected by the Gallery, constituted the new south wing of Garove's plan. However, the planned north wing was never built.

The palace gardens were redesigned to conform to the French formal style, with views and perspectives continuing out to infinity based on the Versailles model, which at the time was considered the ideal royal residence. Garove's plans for these expansions were even sent for review and approval by Robert de Cotte, the architect of the French court. In the gardens Garove demolished the Temple of Diana (1700), traced and extended the Royal Alley (1702), demolished the 17th-century citroneria (1703), traced the English Garden (1710), built the Green Apartments and demolished the 17th-century Loggia Theatre (1711).

Further damage to the complex was inflicted during the 1706 Siege of Turin, when French troops under Louis d'Aubusson de La Feuillade were garrisoned there during the War of the Spanish Succession. After the Savoyard victory, Victor Amadeus II entrusted Filippo Juvarra in 1716 to enlarge the palace. Juvarra then completed the Great Gallery (1716), set up the south-east pavilion, built the new citroneria and the Great Stable ( Scuderia Grande ) in 1722–27, and also built the St. Hubert's chapel ( Cappella Di Sant'Uberto ). In the gardens, Juvarra demolished the remaining foundations of the Temple of Diana in 1719, and in 1725 replaced it with a labyrinth and another pavilion. The façades were also renovated in the French style, which turned the palace into a masterpiece or Baroque architecture.

In 1739 Charles Emmanuel III (1701–1773) tasked the new building director Benedetto Alfieri with building connecting structures across the still disjointed wings of the palace. To do so, Alfieri demolished the old clock tower and rebuilt it in the same location (1739), erected the Belvedere wing (1751), the gallery between the chapel and the citroneria (1754), the small western stable (1758) and the eastern stable (1760), and the indoor riding halls (1761). In 1788–89 architects Giuseppe Battista Piacenza [ it ] and Carlo Randoni created the staircase on the façade of the Palace of Diana, and added decorative elements in line with the neoclassical taste of the time and the style of the new apartments on the first floor, intended for Victor Emmanuel I (1759–1824), putting an end to the architectural evolution of the complex.

In spite of renovations, in the 18th century the palace was often overlooked by the royal family, in favor of the hunting lodge of Stupinigi ( Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi ; 1729) which was by then more in tune with the tastes of contemporary European courts. Nevertheless, the palace continued to be used during the reigns of Victor Amadeus III (r. 1773–1796) and Charles Emmanuel IV (r. 1796–1802).

In 1792, the Kingdom of Sardinia (which included Piedmont), joined several European powers in the War of the First Coalition against the French First Republic, but by 1796 it was defeated by Napoleon 's Army of italy and forced to sign the Treaty of Paris in May, ceding the original Duchy of Savoy and the County of Nice to France, and giving the French Revolutionary Army free passage through Piedmont. On 6 December 1798 Napoleon's general, Barthélemy Catherine Joubert, occupied Turin and forced Charles Emmanuel IV to abdicate and leave for Sardinia. The provisional government in Turin then voted to unite Piedmont with France. In 1799 Austrian forces briefly occupied the city, but after the Battle of Marengo in June 1800 the French regained control.

During the Napoleonic domination in the early 19th century, the buildings of the palace complex were turned into military barracks, and the gardens were destroyed to create a training ground, damaging the complex irreversibly. Because of the heavy damage sustained during the French occupation, once Napoleon was defeated and the Kingdom of Sardinia restored at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the palace did not revert to its previous role as a royal residence, but became permanent property of the Royal Sardinian Army, as Royal Military Domain ( Regio Demanio Militare ). The decorations and furniture that could still be salvaged were then transferred to other palaces and castles owned by the House of Savoy, and the role of the royal summer residence was taken up by the castles and palaces at Racconigi, Stupinigi, and Agliè.

In its new role as a military facility, from 1851 to 1943 the complex was used for various purposes by the Royal Italian Army. It served as headquarters of the Field Artillery Regiment "a Cavallo", the Royal Military School (today Scuola di cavalleria dell'Esercito Italiano [ it ] ), and the 5th Field Artillery Regiment. By the early 1900s the military started abandoning the site, and the property was gradually transferred to the Italian Ministry of Culture, starting in 1936 with the Chapel of St. Hubert.

Once the military garrison left the site, the palace became prey to vandalism and began to decay. Because of lack of funding, the interventions financed by the Ministry of Culture were minimal, with only essential maintenance to preserve the structural integrity of the buildings. A small-scale restoration of the Chapel was undertaken in the 1940s.