Palace of Venaria

Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, wanted a memorial to himself and his wife, Marie Jeanne Baptiste of Savoy-Nemours, and a base for his hunting expeditions in the heathy hill country north of Turin. He bought the villages of Altessano Superiore and Inferiore from the Birago family, of Milanese origin, and renamed the place Venaria — from the Latin Venatio Regia, the royal hunt. It joined the "Garland of Delights", the chain of Savoy palaces and leisure residences around Turin that included Stupinigi and the Castle of Rivoli.

In 1658 the duke gave the project to Amedeo di Castellamonte, whose father had been chief architect to Charles Emmanuel I. Construction began in 1659: the stable and clock tower were finished in 1660, and the Palace of Diana, the core residence, was complete by 1663. The scheme was far more than a hunting lodge: a new town was laid out on a circular plan imitating the collar of the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, the Savoy dynastic order, with palace, church and town composed as a single ideal city built around the princely hunt — an organisation reported to have influenced Louis XIV's thinking in 1669 about the future development of Versailles. Castellamonte kept building until 1679, adding the Fountain of Hercules, the Temple of Diana and the porticoes of the town's main street.

On 1 October 1693, during the Nine Years' War, the French army destroyed some of the buildings. Victor Amadeus II resolved to rebuild in the French style to rival Versailles, and from 1699 the architect Michelangelo Garove re-imagined the complex: a south-west pavilion in 1702, a south-east pavilion in 1703–13, and the Great Gallery between them, still unfinished at his death in 1713. The palace suffered again in 1706, when French troops under Louis d'Aubusson de La Feuillade were garrisoned there during the Siege of Turin, in the War of the Spanish Succession.

After the Savoyard victory, Victor Amadeus II entrusted the enlargement to Filippo Juvarra in 1716. Juvarra completed the Great Gallery, built the new citroneria and the Great Stable in 1722–27, and raised the chapel of Sant'Uberto (1716–1729); hemmed in by the surrounding buildings, it could carry no true dome, so one was painted in trompe-l'œil on the vaulting. Benedetto Alfieri knitted the still-disjointed wings together from 1739, and a new staircase and neoclassical touches of 1788–89 ended the architectural evolution of the complex — though by then the court preferred the newer lodge at Stupinigi.

Piedmont's defeat by Napoleon ended the palace's court life. In December 1798 the French general Joubert occupied Turin and forced Charles Emmanuel IV to abdicate, and under Napoleonic rule the complex was turned into military barracks, its gardens destroyed to make a training ground — damage from which it never recovered. When the Kingdom of Sardinia was restored at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Venaria did not return to royal use: it became permanent property of the Royal Sardinian Army as a Royal Military Domain, and the salvageable decorations and furniture were carried off to other Savoy palaces.

From 1851 to 1943 the complex served the army as headquarters of the horse artillery regiment, the Royal Military School and the 5th Field Artillery Regiment. From the early 1900s the military gradually abandoned the site, and the property began passing to the Ministry of Culture in 1936, starting with the chapel of Sant'Uberto.

Once the garrison left, the palace fell prey to vandalism and slow decay; funding stretched only to essential maintenance, a small chapel restoration in the 1940s and a cosmetic refresh of the Great Gallery and Hall of Diana for the unification centenary in 1961. In 1978 the palace was handed over to the heritage authorities, and on 5 December 1996 the culture minister Walter Veltroni and the president of Piedmont established a committee for the Reggia di Venaria. The works that followed, from 1999 to 2007, were the largest restoration project in European history: some 1,800 workers across 300 firms, and more than €300 million — €170 million of it from the European Union.

The palace had meanwhile been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in December 1997, one of the 14 Residences of the Royal House of Savoy. The restored complex opened to visitors on 13 October 2007, and drew 1,048,857 visitors in 2017 — the sixth most visited museum in Italy. In 2019 its recreated gardens were named Italy's most beautiful park.