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La Venaria Reale

The Savoy hunting palace at Venaria Reale, commissioned by Carlo Emanuele II in 1658, transformed by Juvarra and reopened in 2007 after a record-breaking restoration.

The home page of lavenaria.it, 25 September 2026
The home page of lavenaria.it on 25 September 2026

La Venaria Reale is the Savoy royal complex at Venaria Reale, on the outskirts of Torino, made up of the Reggia, the Gardens and the Castello della Mandria; it is run directly by the Consorzio delle Residenze Reali Sabaude[1]. Founded in 1658 as a pleasure and hunting residence for Duke Carlo Emanuele II, turned into a royal palace in the eighteenth century by Filippo Juvarra, reduced to a barracks for almost two centuries and reopened in 2007 after one of the largest restorations in Europe[2].

Since 1997 it has been one of the main components of the UNESCO site in Piemonte dedicated to the Residenze sabaude, the system of palaces and country houses that radiates out from the Palazzo Reale into the territory around the capital: a building programme begun by Emanuele Filiberto when he moved the capital to Torino in 1562 and continued by his successors to display the power of the House of Savoy[3].

The seventeenth-century hunting palace

Carlo Emanuele II undertook the project at the urging of his mother, Cristina di Francia, and entrusted it to the court architect Amedeo di Castellamonte: not just a palace, but stables, a park, hunting woods and an entire village, cut through by a single perspectival axis that runs from the main road through the Reggia and continues into the garden canal[2]. The village was called Altessano Superiore and took its new name precisely in the seventeenth century, from venaria, the great hunting lodge commissioned by the duke[4].

The project looked to Rome more than to treatises: in 1661 the drawings were sent to Gian Lorenzo Bernini for his opinion, and Bernini himself appears as an interlocutor in the illustrated book in which Castellamonte described the work, La Venaria Reale palazzo di piacere e di caccia, dated 1672 and printed in Torino in 1674[5]. The seventeenth-century park, with fountains and small lakes, had almost three thousand statues[4].

Garove, Juvarra, Alfieri: the royal palace

In 1693 the palace was partly destroyed by fire[4]. From 1699 Michelangelo Garove transformed it to meet the ambitions of Vittorio Amedeo II, and the gardens were redesigned in the French style[2]. It fell to Juvarra to take up a building site that Garove had left unfinished: he completed the Galleria di Diana and the head pavilion (1714-1726), built the church of Sant'Uberto (1716-1730) and the Citroniera-Scuderia and Mandria building sites (1720-1729)[6].

The Galleria Grande, about 80 metres long, 12 wide and about 15 high at the centre of the vault, linked the king's apartment to that of the heir to the throne; light enters through 44 large windows and 22 oval openings in the vault. The original floor was removed during the French occupation and reused in Torino in the Galleria del Beaumont; the current one, remade to Juvarra's design, dates from 1995[7]. The chapel of Sant'Uberto, dedicated to the patron saint of hunters and built on a chamfered Greek cross plan, has a high altar and statues of the four Doctors of the Church by Giovanni Baratta[8]. In 1739 Carlo Emanuele III called on Benedetto Alfieri to link the buildings with new galleries and to build further stables[2]; the Scuderia Grande could hold up to two hundred horses[9].

Not far away Juvarra designed the Mandria in 1713, the large estate commissioned by Vittorio Amedeo II for horse breeding, later extended by Vittorio Emanuele II[4], who had an apartment of more than twenty rooms in the castle, shared with Rosa Vercellana, the «Bela Rosin», furnished by the court architect Domenico Ferri[10].

Two centuries as a barracks

After Napoleon's arrival in 1796 and the royal family's departure in 1798 the residence lost its function; after the Restoration, under Vittorio Emanuele I, it became a barracks. The design of the gardens disappeared, turned into fields, pasture and a parade ground; the complex suffered damage in the two world wars and was then abandoned to vandals[2].

The largest building site in Europe

The recovery began in 1999, promoted by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and by the Regione Piemonte with the support of the European Union, and was presented as the largest conservation project of a cultural asset ever carried out in Europe[2]. According to the consortium the cost was 300 million euros (50 from the State, 80 from the Region, 170 from the European Union) for 240,000 square metres of buildings and 800,000 of gardens; a total of 1,800 workers were involved, with 16 international tenders and more than 5,800 samples and surveys, and the work was completed in 2011, for the 150th anniversary of Italian unification[11]. In 2006 the superintendent Francesco Pernice, who directed its main parts with designers such as Gae Aulenti and Paolo Marconi, spoke instead of a 400-million project, begun with 45 billion lire later supplemented by 120 billion from the European Community, describing it as «an environmental, landscape and social regeneration»[12].

The result was 9,500 square metres of stuccowork and 1,000 of frescoes recovered, 80 hectares of gardens open to visitors with 200,000 new plantings and a Peschiera holding 11 million litres of water. The Reggia reopened to the public on 9 June and 12 October 2007; the Teatro d'Acqua at the Fontana del Cervo followed (2008), then the Citroniera and the Scuderia Grande (2010), the Potager Royal (2011) and the restoration of the Fontana d'Ercole (2022)[2].

The Bucintoro

On 14 September 2011 the Savoy Bucintoro arrived at the Reggia[2], now on display in Juvarra's stables: the ceremonial barge built in the shipyards of Venice between 1729 and 1731 for Vittorio Amedeo II. It travelled up the Po for a month and on 4 September 1731 docked at the Castello del Valentino; for more than a century it was the floating palace of court festivities. A chronicle of the time records the first outing of Carlo Emanuele III and Queen Polissena of Hesse, on 8 September 1731[13]:

«in the afternoon Their Majesties took their pleasure with the Bucintoro on the Po, which drew an innumerable crowd on account of its novelty»

Contemporary chronicle, 8 September 1731

Vittorio Emanuele II donated it to the City in 1869 and in 1873 it entered the Museo Civico; it is the only original bucintoro in the world preserved complete with mast, oars and sails, and the Centro Conservazione e Restauro La Venaria Reale has brought its gilding and allegorical paintings back to light[13].

La Venaria today

The Consorzio delle Residenze Reali Sabaude that runs the complex is made up of the Ministry of Culture, the Regione Piemonte, the City of Venaria Reale, the Compagnia di San Paolo and the Fondazione 1563 per l'Arte e la Cultura; it operates under articles 112 and 115 of the Code of Cultural Heritage, is chaired by Michele Briamonte and directed by Chiara Teolato, and is also tasked with promoting the whole system of Savoy residences[1]. The «Teatro di Storia e Magnificenza» visitor route runs for almost 2,000 metres between the basement and main floor and displays more than 500 works, from paintings to tapestries, from snuffboxes to musical instruments[14].

In 2017 the Reggia had 1,048,834 visitors, falling to 958,903 in 2018, seventh place in the ranking of state cultural sites[15]. In 2019 its gardens won the «Most Beautiful Park in Italy» award[9]. Alongside the visitor route, La Venaria offers exhibitions, concerts and shows: from 2 October 2026 to 14 February 2027 «Atelier dei Moderni» is announced, with twentieth-century paintings from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. For tickets the Reggia's website links to the online box office lavenaria.museitorino.it[16].

The Weekend Reale and the second Maratona Reale (10-11 October 2026)

On 10 and 11 October 2026 the «Weekend Reale» returns to Venaria Reale, with the second edition of the 42.195 km Maratona Reale alongside the half marathon, the new 30 km and the traditional 10 km, as well as the «Corsa del Principino & Family» for children and families.

The Weekend Reale of 10 and 11 October 2026

Timeline

  • — In Venaria Reale a man of about 80 dies after falling from the sixth-floor balcony of his home in via Saragat; the local police are investigating the circumstances. → CronacaQui Torino TorinoToday
  • — An event at the Lingotto and a gala dinner at the Reggia di Venaria for the awarding of dynastic honours, with donations of up to 30,000 euros, causes a public rift within the House of Savoy between Aimone di Savoia and Emanuele Filiberto. → CronacaQui Torino CronacaQui Torino
  • — The Weekend Reale returns to Venaria Reale on 10 and 11 October, with the second edition of the 42.195 km Maratona Reale alongside the half marathon, the new 30 km and the traditional 10 km, as well as the Corsa del Principino & Family for children and families. → TorinoToday Il Torinese

Related articles: Cappella della Sindone, Filippo Juvarra, Palazzo Reale, Residenze sabaude, Royal Weekend and Royal Marathon of Venaria, second edition (October 10-11, 2026), Venaria Reale

Pages linking here

Sources

  1. La Venaria Reale
  2. La Venaria Reale
  3. UNESCO World Heritage Centre
  4. Treccani, Enciclopedia Italiana
  5. Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
  6. Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
  7. La Venaria Reale
  8. La Venaria Reale
  9. Residenze Reali Sabaude
  10. La Venaria Reale
  11. La Venaria Reale
  12. Mecenate / CulturalWeb — 15 May 2006
  13. La Venaria Reale
  14. La Venaria Reale
  15. Finestre sull'Arte — 16 February 2019
  16. La Venaria Reale
  17. TorinoToday — 1 October 2026
  18. Il Torinese — 1 October 2026

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