Venaria Reale

Before it was Venaria, this place was called Altessano. In the sixteenth century it had split into Altessano Superiore and Altessano Inferiore, and it was on the upper one that in 1658 Carlo Emanuele II had Amedeo di Castellamonte design not a villa but an entire system: the residence, the gardens, the service buildings, the hunting grounds and the new town, drawn together as one. The name came afterwards: Venaria stands for ars venatoria, the art of the hunt, and no act is known to have established it — usage simply spread it, by habit, from the estate to the whole town. Altessano Inferiore, meanwhile, kept the old name, and is still a hamlet of Venaria Reale today: the town carries its own former name about with it as a suburb.

In 1693 French troops under marshal Catinat wrecked the complex, and only some parts of it survived. Vittorio Amedeo II rebuilt it larger, and when the Savoys became kings the programme grew wider still: to Filippo Juvarra belong the Galleria Grande — that tunnel of light which is among the most photographed images of European baroque — the chapel of Sant'Uberto, the Citroniera and the great stables. Then the palace spent nearly two centuries in military use, alteration and decay, before one of the largest restoration works in Europe gave it back to the public in 2007. Round about, the Savoys had had mulberries planted and silkworms raised: from that comes the textile vocation that in the twentieth century would bring viscose here. The park of the Mandria, once the horse estate, today protects fragments of the lowland forest that covered Piedmont; and in front of the gates the town laid out to serve the court lives on cafés and shops along via Mensa.