Piazza Castello

Turin's central square, born around the castle built on a Roman gate: for four centuries the heart of Savoy power and the site of the city's great gatherings.

Piazza Castello is the central square of Turin, the place from which the Savoy governed their state for three centuries. At its centre stands Palazzo Madama, born on a Roman gate; the north side is closed off by the Palazzo Reale, which the Residenze Reali Sabaude network calls the “geographic, strategic and political centre of the Savoy capital”^[1]. Around it, under the arcades, stand the Teatro Regio and the Royal Church of San Lorenzo; from here the main streets of the historic centre set out.

From the Roman gate to the castle

The heart of the square is older than the square itself. In the 1st century AD the eastern gate of Augusta Taurinorum opened here: two sixteen-sided towers framed four archways, the two central ones for carts and the two side ones for pedestrians, with a layout similar to that of the Porta Palatina^[2]. Between 1225 and 1260 the gate stopped being a threshold and became a defensive element: the passage was moved to a new opening in the walls next to the southern tower, the Fibellona gate. In 1280 the marquis Guglielmo of Monferrato had to cede the city to Tommaso di Savoia, and in documents from the 1290s the building already appears as a castrum, the fortress from which the square would take its name^[2].

The square of the capital

The turning point came in 1563, when Emanuele Filiberto moved the court from Chambéry to Turin. The castle was in poor condition and the duke settled temporarily in the bishop's palace, while awaiting a new residence^[3]. A vow made by the duke himself at the battle of Saint-Quentin, in 1557, would later be fulfilled by his successors right there in the square, with the church dedicated to San Lorenzo^[4]. From 1584 Carlo Emanuele I began building the royal palace on the northern side^[1].

The square's regular shape is owed to Ascanio Vitozzi: his layout, carried out from 1612, called for uniform building fronts of just two storeys above a continuous portico^[5]. On his death, in 1615, he was succeeded by Carlo di Castellamonte, who from 1620 designed the “Città Nuova” to the south: via Nuova, today's via Roma, was to run from the gate of the same name up to the royal palace, widened from 7 to 11 metres with 7.50-metre arcades, opening halfway along onto Piazza Reale, today's piazza San Carlo^[6].

The theatre of the court

In the seventeenth century the square was the stage of Savoy power. The Palazzo Madama museum describes it as the site of public celebrations and the court's propaganda^[5]. In 1613 an engraving documents the pavilion for the exposition of the Shroud, topped by a canopy and placed in front of the castle; on 8 April 1645 the whole city celebrated the end of the struggles over the succession to Vittorio Amedeo I, which had pitted the pro-French faction of the regent Cristina di Francia against the pro-Spanish faction of her brothers-in-law Tommaso di Savoia Carignano and Maurizio; in 1650 the wedding of Adelaide di Savoia to Ferdinand of Bavaria was accompanied by numerous spectacles in the square^[5].

The eighteenth century gave the square its most celebrated feature. Between 1718 and 1721 Filippo Juvarra built the façade and staircase of Palazzo Madama; he would have liked a completely open loggia, but Turin's climate forced him to close it in with large glass windows^[7]. In 1722, for the wedding of Carlo Emanuele III, Juvarra lit the palace with 450 torches and candles^[7]. In 1731, just ten years after the work was finished, the German traveller and man of letters Carl Ludwig von Pöllnitz was enthusiastic about it:

«whatever is most beautiful and most perfect in modern architecture in Turin, and perhaps in Europe, is the façade of the palace of the late Madama Reale»
Carl Ludwig von Pöllnitz, 1731

On 26 December 1740 the Teatro Regio was inaugurated with Francesco Feo's Arsace; with about 2,500 seats between the stalls and five tiers of boxes, it immediately became an international benchmark for capacity. A fire during the night of 8-9 February 1936 destroyed it; Benedetto Alfieri's façade survived, and it was with this that the new hall by Carlo Mollino, inaugurated on 10 April 1973 with Les Vêpres siciliennes, had to engage^[8].

The Risorgimento under the arcades

In the nineteenth century the square became the seat of institutions. In 1832 Carlo Alberto opened the Reale Galleria on the first floor of Palazzo Madama, the embryo of the Galleria Sabauda, which remained there until 1865; in 1848 the palace's great hall, transformed by Ernesto Melano, became the chamber of the Subalpine Senate, and on 2 April 1860 a speech by Vittorio Emanuele II opened there the first parliament of northern and central Italy; for lack of space, the first sitting of the Kingdom of Italy was instead held at Palazzo Carignano, on 18 February 1861^[9]. From 1822 to 1920 the Roman towers also housed an astronomical observatory^[9].

In front of the Juvarra façade, seat of the Senate, stands the monument to the Standard-Bearer of the Sardinian Army by Vincenzo Vela: a flag-bearer with drawn sword and the tricolour, a gift from Milanese exiles to the Piedmontese army after Cavour's diplomatic successes at the Congress of Paris^[10]. It was inaugurated on 10 April 1859^[11]. Out of caution towards Austria, the dedication, “The Milanese to the Sardinian army, 15 January 1857”, was covered with a slab of black marble and remained hidden until 8 June 1859, when the Franco-Piedmontese troops entered Milan^[10].

From roundabout to living room

For much of the twentieth century the square was crossed by traffic like a large roundabout. Between 1999 and 2006, as part of the strategy to relaunch the city's image, the square was redesigned: different materials and changes in level marked out the space reserved for pedestrians, retractable fountains were built, and the restored Palazzo Reale returned to its original ivory white^[12]. The new space became the main stage of the 2006 Winter Olympics and hosted Festivalbar, skating rinks and events of every kind: initiatives that, according to MuseoTorino, met with “opposing opinions among residents” but marked a new use of the central, formal spaces of the city^[12].

Since then the square has been the site of Turin's great gatherings. On 13 May 2012 the open-top bus of Juventus, having set out from the stadium, arrived in piazza Castello for the celebration of the club's thirtieth league title in front of hundreds of thousands of fans, estimated at between 300 and 400 thousand, with Antonio Conte and Alessandro Del Piero receiving the loudest applause^[13]. From 28 April to 5 May 2025, in the Jubilee year, a tent set up in the square allowed visitors to explore a life-size digital image of the Shroud, in place of a traditional exposition^[14].

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