ROYAL RESIDENCES OF THE SAVOY FAMILY

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VILLA   SAVOIA

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An old exteior view of Villa Savoia, in the thierties few changes were done.

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Queen Elena's bedroom

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RACCONIGI  CASTLE - CASTELLO REALE DI RACCONIGI

WORLD HERITAGE - UNESCO

The Committee decided to inscribe this property on the basis of criteria (I), (II), (IV) and (V), considering that the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy in and around Turin represent a comprehensive overview of European monumental architecture in the 17th and 18th centuries, using style, dimensions, and space to illustrate in an exceptional way the prevailing doctrine of absolute monarchy in material terms.

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Racconigi Castle is in Piemonte (Italy) in the Cuneo province (about 40 km from Turin). The Italian State is now the owner of the castle since 1980, it is visitable every day expect for monday.

Piazza Carlo Alberto - 12035 Racconigi (CN) - Tel. ++39-172-84005

Opened from 8.30 to 19.30

Castle:
€ 5,00

Castle Park:
€ 2,00

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An aerial view of the Castle

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HISTORY of  the "CASTELLO  di  RACCONIGI"

The majestic Royal Castle of Racconigi is a unique example of the fusion of various artistic elements created during more than seven centuries. The very long period of reconstruction, restoration and remodelling that began in the second half of the seventeenth century, accelerating intensely in the 1830s and ‘40s, is clearly apparent in the architecture and decorations existing today. Included among the patrimonial estates of the House of Savoy, the Castello Reale di Racconigi was probably one of the Savoys’ favourite buildings. They lived there until 1946, using it to house their collection of family portraits and as the preferred site, especially during the last decades of their rule, for particularly symbolic occasions such as the birth of heirs, for weddings and for receiving foreign heads of State.

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Racconigi is a vast and complex residence, where the memory of a centuries-old past and life at court magically intertwined amidst official state commitments and daily “private” life is still alive and tangible (see the second floor apartments). Here, perhaps more than at any other Savoy Residence, we can sense the almost bourgeois lifestyle of the leading members of the House of Savoy during the Reign of Italy, especially during the first few decades of the twentieth century.

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The Castello di Racconigi has two spectacular façades (the one facing the town and the other facing the park) are the regal ones typically associated with a royal castle. The characteristics of the original fortified structure have been lost almost entirely and what little remains can only be seen in parts of the foundation. Nevertheless, a medieval castle once stood on this same site. It had been built to defend the populated area that had developed in the vast, fertile plain to the right of the Màira stream. This was probably not long after the territorial division of the government in 1091, when the area of Racconigi (then belonging to the Marquise Adelaide) was passed on to Bonifacio del Vasto. For a long time Racconigi remained part of marquisate of Saluzzo. The history of the House of Savoy records that it was passed on to the Savoia-Acaja princes at the beginning of the thirteenth century. They held it until 1418, when, upon the death of Giacomo d’Acaja (the last leading member of the lineage) the feud was handed down to his natural son Ludovico d'Acaja, Count of Racconigi. When Bernardino II, the last of his descendants, died in 1605 (causing the extinction of the Savoia-Racconigi line) Duke Carlo Emanuele I assigned the Castle and land to his younger son Tommaso (1620), along with the title of Prince of Savoia-Carignano, thus giving rise to the Savoy cadet line that with Carlo Alberto would ascend to the throne in 1831.

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We have no news of important work on the Castello di Racconigi until the middle of the seventeenth century. At that time it still had the square ground plan, internal courtyard and four corner embattled towers that are typical of a medieval castle, and which can still be made out in the engraving that the “Theatrum Sabaudiae” assigns to “Racconigi, città nobilissima di Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, principe di Carignano” (Racconigi very nouble city belonging to Emanuele Filiberto Amedeo of Savoia Prince of Carignano). The plate for the engraving is probably the work of architect Tommaso Borgonio around 1666-69 and does not really represent a situation actually existing at the time, but is, rather, a plan that was never even started.

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The Theatrum Sabaudiae view

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Nevertheless, the part of the engraving concerning the castle is important because it shows that the designs for reconstructing the castle to meet the new needs of the princely residence were in a crucial phase, even though progress will still be slow. (Another design by Borgonio is known to have been entrusted to the ducal engineer Carlo Morello about ten years earlier). In 1671 the architect Carlo Emanuele Lanfranchi proposed still another idea. He designed a large square with arcades and two churches standing opposite the southern façade, which gave greater importance to the symbolic significance of a princely residence.

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All of the plans for renovating and enlarging the old medieval structures had been prepared by 1675, they had basically been left on paper and never carried out; the first, real remodelling (in reality rebuilding) of the entire edifice was set into motion only in the last twenty-five years of the seventeenth century. The Castle immediately becomes one of the greatest European Baroque architectural achievements of that century. Designed by the great architect Guarino Guarini, it has the same brilliance and sparkling inventiveness that had already come to characterise his other works. Guarini had arrived in the Savoy capital in 1666 to serve the court, and particularly the princes of Savoia-Carignano, and had already designed the extraordinary dome of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud that is joined to the Cathedral. Two years later he also provided the designs and plans for the dome of the ducal Church of San Lorenzo, in Turin as well.

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In 1675 Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia-Carignano gave Guarini the task of studying a plan for the restoration of the “palacio di delicie a Racconigi”. Since it had been decided that the façade facing the large park should be the first part to be rebuilt, becouse Prince Emanuele Filiberto used to arrive from Turin, and Turin is in the north as regards the position of Racconigi. The demolition work on the medieval structures to the west began the very next year. As was his custom, Guarini prepared countless ideas, sketches and designs; many were his own, while others were by his collaborators. His design for the reconstruction of the castle preserved the general, planimetrical layout of a central, square building (the courtyard covered and made into a sumptuous reception hall) and widened the four corner towers, thus doubling their size and transforming the defensive structures into stately, residential wings. Guarini wanted also to built an imposing staircase "a collo d'oca" with statues and busts.

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The reconstruction of the castle began immediately while Guarini, in the meantime, was involved in other important projects. One of these was Palazzo Carignano in Turin, where he had been working since 1679 for the very same princes who had engaged him at Racconigi. Progress on the castle was rapid and did not slow down even when the architect suddenly left Piedmont in 1681. One year after the death of Guarini in Milan, in August 1684, the building to the north and the two side wings, surmounted by a small, lantern-niche, were completed; the large, two-tiered, central pavilion (with a curious shape somewhat like an oriental pagoda) was finished in 1685.