The royal castle of Racconigi stands some thirty kilometres south of the Royal Palace of Turin and has a history nearly a thousand years long. The first record of a fortification here goes back to the eleventh century, when the territory was part of the March of Turin; in 1091, on the death of marchioness Adelaide of Susa, the fief entered the possessions of the marquises of Saluzzo, and it was Manfredo II who had a first square-plan castle raised around an inner courtyard. In the second half of the fourteenth century the fief passed to a branch of the House of Savoy, and in 1620 duke Charles Emmanuel I gave it to his son Tommaso Francesco, founder of the Savoy-Carignano line.
What to see
It was still a medieval fortress then: bare brick, square plan, four corner towers, a moat, a drawbridge and a tall side keep. The transformation into a pleasure house begins in 1676, when Emanuele Filiberto entrusted the design to Guarino Guarini: in the courtyard Guarini raised a large central block with a pagoda roof and, on the bases of the two towers of the north front, developed two four-storey pavilions crowned by square domes with white marble lanterns. The park was handled by André Le Nôtre, the architect of the gardens of Versailles.
Visiting
The second great season is neoclassical. From 1757 Ludovico Luigi Vittorio di Carignano commissioned Giovanni Battista Borra, who remade the southern front, adding the four-column Corinthian porch and the dentilled pediment of Palladian inspiration, with the monumental stairway in front of it. Inside, the works involved the Hall of Hercules, the Room of Diana and the Chinese Apartment, decorated with precious rice-paper wallpapers.
Our editors' tip
The castle was later chosen as the seat of the Royal Holidays, the place where the royal family spent summer and autumn, and that explains why it does not look like a palace of state: it is a country house of enormous size. It belongs to the circuit of the Savoy Residences and since 1997 it has been on the UNESCO world heritage list. The park is worth as much as the building: allow half a day.