Royal Library of Turin

The Royal Library is the library of the Savoy family, at Piazza Castello 191, founded by Carlo Alberto and designed by Pelagio Palagi; it is part of the Musei Reali and is best known for the drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, including the Self-Portrait and the Codex on the Flight of Birds.^[1]^[2]

The founding

Sources date the founding differently: one page of MuseoTorino gives 1831, a Musei Reali entry gives 1832, and another MuseoTorino page together with the Treccani encyclopedia give 1837.^[2]^[3]^[1]^[4] Carlo Alberto brought together here the old Savoy libraries and expanded them with volumes purchased from antiquarians across Europe; a grand staircase connects it to the Royal Armoury.^[4]^[3] In the basement a Roman tower from the mid-1st century, discovered in 1892, is preserved.^[9]

The collections

According to the Treccani, the library holds over 150,000 printed volumes and 4,000 manuscripts, including incunabula, rare Piedmontese prints and 16th-century portolan charts; the Musei Reali instead list a holding of more than 200,000 items, with over 4,000 illuminated codices and books of hours belonging to the first dukes, 16th-century nautical charts and engravings from the Theatrum Sabaudiae.^[4]^[5] Drawings by Michelangelo, Raphael and Rembrandt are also kept here.^[2]

Leonardo

The Leonardo collection arrived with the purchase of 1,585 drawings by old masters, negotiated by the Chieri merchant Giovanni Volpato: the contract dates to September 1839 and the sheets reached the library in January 1840.^[6] There are thirteen autograph drawings by Leonardo, including the Self-Portrait, the «Face of a Young Woman» linked to the angel in the Virgin of the Rocks, studies for the Battle of Anghiari and studies of horses for the Sforza and Trivulzio monuments.^[6]^[7] The Codex on the Flight of Birds, a notebook from 1505-1506, was given to Umberto I by Teodoro Sabachnikoff in 1893.^[6] According to curator Paola Salvi, the Self-Portrait dates to 1517-1518, the Amboise years.^[6]

The Leonardo Room opened in 1998.^[1] From 28 March to 30 June 2024 the exhibition «Leonardo's Self-Portrait» brought together more than sixty works, fifteen of them original Leonardos; in 2026, while the Self-Portrait is "resting", the Leonardo Space at the Galleria Sabauda is displaying the «Three Views of a Bearded Male Head», long attributed to Cesare Borgia.^[8]^[10] From 21 May 2026 to 6 January 2027 the library will host the exhibition «Margherita, First Queen of Italy», marking the centenary of her death.^[11]

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Sources

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