Royal Palace of Turin

The palace occupies the Piazzetta Reale beside Piazza Castello, forming one side of a central civic ensemble from which main streets radiate. The principal facade runs for roughly one hundred seven metres and rises to an average height near thirty metres. Its composition presents a central block with two taller end pavilions, and the western elevation is visibly interrupted by the mass of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, which projects above the line of the main frontage.

The Chapel of the Holy Shroud, added in the late 1600s (dates given around 1688–1694), occupies the palace’s western wing and connects to the cathedral apse. Its roof is described as a spiralled dome, and the chapel was built specifically to house the Shroud. The chapel physically alters the palace silhouette and forms a major vertical element on the western side.

Vertical circulation is dominated by a large double-ramp marble flight known as the Scala delle Forbici (Scissors Staircase), an eighteenth-century intervention designed so that its weight rests on the outside walls rather than on the underlying wooden floors. The staircase opens to the rear courtyard with large windows and serves as a ceremonial approach to the main floor, allowing grand arrivals without overloading earlier structural timber.

The main floor, or piano nobile, contains the palace’s key representative chambers. These include the Great Ballroom hung with tapestries illustrating Don Quixote, the small Beaumont gallery, the Chinese Sitting Room, the Winter Apartment of the King, and the Throne Room. A suite of three antechambers (Tre Anticamere), functioning as guard and attendant rooms, leads toward the princely apartments. Adjacent to the Royal Armoury are the apartments once assigned to the Duke of Aosta.

Furniture and interior fittings reflect high eighteenth-century court taste. A Chinese cabinet and a private cabinet for secret state business feature painted vaults by Claudio Francesco Beaumont and elaborate carved wall panelling. Two monumental furniture pieces by master cabinetmaker Pietro Piffetti, each standing over three metres high and executed in precious woods with ivory, mother-of-pearl and bronze, appear in inventories and descriptions of the palace interiors.

The Royal Armoury occupies a northern wing facing the main square and was inaugurated by King Charles Albert in 1837. The collection includes sixteenth- and seventeenth-century armours, tournament armour associated with Emmanuel Philibert, the equestrian armour of Charles Emmanuel I, a pistol linked to Charles V, about two hundred fifty flags, and a section of Oriental weapons and armour. The armoury complex incorporates a large staircase of the mid-eighteenth century, a rotunda, the Beaumont gallery, and a medal room added in 1839.

The southern approach is enclosed by a nineteenth-century gate and railwork completed by Pelagio Palagi and finished with cast statues of the Dioscuri by Abbondio Sangiorgio. A balustrade dated to 1660 is set along the palace edge and is attributed to two seventeenth-century carvers. Behind the palace, the royal gardens were laid out in the late 1600s to designs linked to the great French garden tradition and executed with basins, pathways, fountains and statuary. The grounds suffered loss of sculpture and fittings during the Napoleonic years, were designated Parco Imperiale in 1805, and later saw restoration of eighteenth-century statues and large commemorative vases, with additional nineteenth-century marble monuments placed by Victor Emmanuel II.