The royal apartments of Borgo Castello are inside the Castello della Mandria, a residence of the Savoy in the La Mandria nature park, in Venaria Reale. The story begins in 1693, when a structure for breeding thoroughbred mares, the Mandria vecchia, was built on the spot. A few years later Duke Vittorio Amedeo II entrusted the court architect Michelangelo Garove with a larger palace, intended for leisure too; on his death the works passed to Filippo Juvarra, who in 1721 designed an enlargement with a second courtyard. In 1860, at the request of Vittorio Emanuele II, the enlargement and furnishing of the royal apartments began, on which Ernesto Melano also worked.
What to see
The complex appears today as a rectangle of 280 metres by 100, with three inner courtyards; the buildings are all in brick. The royal apartments have been restored and can be visited. In the fountain at the centre of the first courtyard is a stone group by Vincenzo Vela, a sea horse fighting a triton.
In the same years the king had two hunting lodges built on the estate, the Villa dei Laghi and the Bizzarria, and founded an acclimatisation garden on the example of those in London and Paris, where animals foreign to the fauna of Piedmont could find a suitable environment. After his death, his son Umberto I sold the estate to the Medici del Vascello marquises; in 1976 the Piedmont Region bought the castle and a large part of the park and established the La Mandria Regional Park there. Since 1997 the block of the apartments and the neo-Gothic wing have been part of the UNESCO site of the Savoy Residences.
Visiting
You enter from the La Mandria park: times, tickets and arrangements for visiting the apartments should be checked with the park authority. In 2023 the rest of Borgo Castello was still reported as abandoned, because the works to recover the nineteenth-century buildings had been interrupted.
Our editors' tip
Do not confuse this place with the Reggia: the castle is in the middle of the nature park, and the address is Viale Carlo Emanuele II, Ponte Verde entrance. The visit to the apartments can be combined with a walk on the estate.
