Tom`s travels: Turin and its surroundings (06 and 09/07/2023)

After saying goodbye to my brother following our pilgrimage from France to Turin, I took a bus from the train station and after nearly one hour reached the town of Venaria Reale. Once off the bus, I walked along the main street and the Piazza dell'Annunziata, designed between 1667 and 1690 by Amedeo di Castellamonte as an urban scenography to emphasize the entrance to the Palace of Venaria which I was headed to visit. On either side of the square in a semicircle were set two identical front-facing churches both in an elegant baroque style. Continuing along said main street I reached the end of it where the palace then appeared in its grandeur and scenography. I entered the ticket office and got my free entry with the Piemonte Museums Card. Then heading to the palace's entrance I entered its southeastern wing. Here I dropped my backpack and got the audioguide and started my visit. The large Reggia di Venaria was built starting in 1675 by Amedeo di Castellamonte, commissioned by Duke Charles Emmanuel II, who needed a base for his hunting expeditions in the vicinity of Turin. The palace was enlarged and refurbished until the Napoleonic Wars when it was damaged and fell into disuse. After a period of military use, it was only in 1978 that the palace was to be finally restored. Work lasted 8 years from 1999 to 2007, and was the largest restoration project in European history. Right before, in 1997, the palace alongside another 11 royal residences around the region was inscribed in the Unesco list as the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy. The visit first took me through a long underground corridor filled with portraits of the members of the house of Savoy. Then a series of rooms depicted the history of the royal house, the battles that took place in and around Turin, and the history of the palace with its final restoration. Heading up to the first floor the visit then brought me to the apartments of the Duke and Duchess and those of the King and Queen many of which still with beautiful decorations and stuccoes and filled with paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries, a pure baroque show. I then walked through the Great Gallery, built in 1716 by Filippo Juvarra, with a whopping 73m length, it featured stucco decorations, 44 arched windows, and a scenic black and white tiled floor. Moving onwards the visit led me to the early 18th-century baroque chapel of Sant'Uberto, due to its size more like a church, also built by Juvarra and once the private chapel of the royal family. Finally, my visit was concluded with the royal stables, 148m in length and now holding a precious collection of carriages, such as the golden gala sedan, commissioned by Vittorio Emanuele II, the silver sedan of Queen Margherita and some carriages of Umberto I and Vittorio Emanuele III as well as Napoleon's carriage. One particularly amazing thing was the Bucintoro, the ceremonial barge of the doges of Venice, commissioned in Venice by Vittorio Amedeo II between 1729 and 1731, and the only original example left in the world. The visit to the building was over but now I was able to visit the large gardens remade as the originals disappeared once French troops turned them into training grounds. After a nice walk around the area, I headed back towards the building ready to give back the audioguide and pick my backpack up. Next up I intended to visit the Castello della Mandria, another royal residency once owned by the House of Savoy. Unfortunately, that meant that I needed to walk more than half an hour towards it as it was located far from anything and the bus only went at specific times on the weekend. Once there, I entered the park which can only be accessed on foot and by bicycle and which consists of over 6500 hectares, of which 3000 are fenced making it the second largest fenced park in Europe. It was in fact a huge hunting ground for King Victor Emmanuel II and now still holds many animals including deer, boars, and foxes. After reaching the castle itself I entered with the ticket and visited the beautiful yet hardly known complex. Started out as a complex in the 17th century it was rebuilt and expanded at the request of Victor Emmanuel II in 1860, soon to be new king of Italy. The interior featured about 20 rooms with beautiful furniture and decoration much of it reminiscent of hunting and nature scenes and styles due to the palace's initial use. Furthermore, the ground floor hosted a nice collection of carriages in the palace's former stables. After the visit it was time to head back; it took me another 40 minutes to head back to the Venaria Castle and from there back to the bus stop which eventually led me back into Turin's city center. Once there I looked for a supermarket and got a quick lunch. After that, I headed on to visit one of the city's museums: the Palazzo Madama. This building has a history going back more than 2000 years. In fact, it started out as the eastern gate of the Roman colony of Julia Augusta Taurinorum, later becoming Turin, and then transformed into a defensive stronghold, later a proper castle, and finally into a baroque palace symbol of Savoy power and included in the UNESCO list of royal residences of the Savoy family. Nowadays the clear distinction, between the medieval stronghold to the east, and the baroque palace to the west can be observed as the complex is literally divided into two different styles. Entering the palace I then got the ticket to see the museum hosted inside, the Museo Civico d'Arte Antica. It presented a nice collection of objects, decorations, and paintings from the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods. Furthermore, the historical rooms of the baroque part were worth visiting as they were embellished with furniture and decorations as well as frescoes from that period. Particularly nice was the small temporary exhibition on the Byzantines with friezes and objects from the period in which they ruled over parts of Italy. Additionally, I also enjoyed climbing to the top of one of the corner towers of the medieval part of the building from where I had a great view of the main square and the royal palace as well as the rest of the surrounding city center. After the visit to the museum, it was time for me to go. In fact, I had planned to take a train all the way back to Oulx, where my brother and I had walked in the previous days, and from there head back to the mountains to visit the famous Fnestrelle fortress. Then after that, I would head back to Turin and continue my visit of the city before heading home to Vicenza.

After a nice couple of days in the mountains I had taken an early train from the town of Pinerolo and had reached Turin once again, At that hour of the day the city was deserted and so nice to walk around. The first monument I intended to visit was the Royal Palace, the first and most important of the Savoy residences and the scene of the politics of the Savoy state for at least three centuries. As I approached it though I found the entrance was still closed so I had a stroll around its pretty gardens located behind the main entrance. As soon as the ticket office opened I headed inside with my Piemonte Museums Card, dropped my backpack, and was then given an audioguide. The palace was built between the 16th and 17th centuries with some additions and changes made by subsequent rulers, particularly in the early 1800s with Charles Albert. The visit started with the royal apartments, the core of the complex, which consisted of lavish rooms with furniture and paintings, and then continued to the royal armory a long beautiful baroque frescoed gallery with medieval and early modern weaponry and weapons. Next up was the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, an amazing and architecturally magnificent baroque chapel constructed by famous architect Guarino Guarini to house the Shroud of Turin, a religious relic believed to be the burial shroud of Jesus. The chapel is actually behind the main altar of Turin's cathedral but it is connected directly to the royal palace so that the members could attend mass and see the shroud undisturbed. The chapel was heavily damaged in a fire in 1997 caused by a short circuit during refurbishment work and because of that underwent a complex 21-year restoration project that finally made it to reopen in 2018. From the chapel, I then moved on to the north wing, added later to the main complex. Here was the large and important collection of the Galleria Sabauda, which contains the royal art collections amassed by the House of Savoy over the centuries ranging from the 13th to the 20th centuries. In the same wing at the lower level was also the Museum of Antiquities with ancient Greek, Etruscan, and Roman artifacts, objects, and statues as well as the ruins of the ancient Roman theatre which were found right below the palace. After more than three hours inside the museum, I got my stuff exited and headed next door to climb to the top of the bell tower of the Cathedral. The view was great as I could see a lot of the city center, including the well-known Basilica of Superga on a hilltop nearby. Unfortunately due to the heat, the view of the mountains was not possible as humidity caused a grey mist to cover the long distances, but I could still make out the Sacra of San Michele which my brother and I had visited a few days before high on the mountain top. After a brief visit to the Cathedral, I then moved on to see the next museum. The Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano located inside the historical Carignano Palace details the history of the Italian Unification, also known as Risorgimento. Its exhibits include weapons, flags, uniforms, and printed and written documents from early 19th-century events all throughout Italy that then led to the wars of independence, and later unification of the country, as well as events until the first world war. A highlight was also the parliamentary chamber of the Chamber of Deputies of the Subalpine Parliament, active from 1848 to 1860, still intact and with the original furnishings as they were in 1860 when it ceased to function. Having visited the museum it was time to get food, I stopped again at a supermarket to get a quick lunch which I had sitting down on a bench in the nice little park of the Palazzo dal pozzo della cisterna. Then I was off to visit more museums, starting with the Pinacoteca dell’Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti. This small rather unknown art museum belongs to the Academy of Fine Arts and presents a series of rooms with excellent paintings from the early 16th century to the late 18th century. Walking back to Palazzo Carignano I then got inside the historical rooms of the palace, only to be visited through a guided tour. The palazzo is another beautiful example of a baroque palace, all made in exposed brickwork by the famous Guarino Guarini. This tour included a visit to the beautiful baroque apartments on the ground floor that were lavishly decorated with gilded furniture and fittings and seemed out of this world. Finally, my museum day ended with a visit to the world-famous Egyptian Museum, housing one of the largest collections of Egyptian antiquities, with more than 30,000 artifacts, considered the second most important Egyptological collection in the world. I had visited already two or three times before but as it was included in the Piemonte Museums Card and having been there long ago I decided to give it a refresher. Unfortunately, I was a bit museum-fatigued so I was not able to spend hours inside marveling at all the amazing artifacts and reading every single description as I sometimes do. However, it was still worth it and even overwhelming specifically at the amount of people visiting compared to all the other museums I had seen that day.

It was then time to head to the train station from where I eventually took the train to my hometown Vicenza, happy after a nice pilgrimage hike, visiting the city of Turin, and a couple more days in the mountains to see the Fenestrelle fortress.