Palazzina di caccia di Stupinigi

A stag crowns the dome of the Savoys' hunting palace, where Filippo Juvarra spun a miniature city of state apartments, stables and gardens around one soaring oval hall. Ten kilometres from Turin, this UNESCO-listed Palazzina is Nichelino's defining landmark and among Piedmont's most exuberant eighteenth-century ensembles.

Why it matters

The Palazzina di caccia di Stupinigi is the most fanciful of the Savoy residences: not a fortress court seat but a pleasure machine built for the chase and for court festivities. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List in 1997 as one of the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy; its owner, the Fondazione Ordine Mauriziano — a dynastic charitable order — now runs the building as a museum of furniture and decoration. The palace, its borgo and the surrounding park shaped the settlement pattern south-west of Turin.

What to notice

Start with the geometry. Four angled wings radiate from the central Salone in the shape of a Saint Andrew's cross, an arrangement Juvarra devised so that arriving coaches, ceremony and views could all pivot on a single room. That Salone is a double-height oval ringed by balconies from which musicians once played, covered by a vault shaped like an overturned boat hull and finished outside with the bronze stag that became the site's emblem; the original 1766 sculpture by Francesco Ladatte, worked in bronze, copper and gold leaf, stands in the stables wing while a copy crowns the lantern. On the vault, Domenico and Giuseppe Valeriani painted trompe-l'oeil architecture framing the myth of Diana, goddess of hunting, between 1731 and 1733. In the apartments, look for the marquetry of cabinetmaker Pietro Piffetti and the carved, gilded rococò stuccos associated with the Bonzanigo workshop, then the gala berlina built for Napoleon in 1805 by Jean-Ernest-Auguste Getting, returned to display in 2024 after two centuries of collectors.

Context and history

Vittorio Amedeo II commissioned the lodge in 1729 from Filippo Juvarra, the Sicilian architect then remaking the entire Savoy capital, and building ran through the rest of the century under Benedetto Alfieri and other designers for Carlo Emanuele III and his successors. Over 31,000 square metres of roofspace eventually held 137 rooms and 17 galleries, hosting royal weddings — among them that of Vittorio Emanuele II to Maria Adelaide of Habsburg in the nineteenth century — and state guests from Tsar Paul I to Napoleon and Paolina Bonaparte. In the 1800s the grounds even kept a zoological garden, whose animals included an elephant named Fritz, a gift to King Carlo Felice from the viceroy of Egypt. From 1919 parts of the building housed the Museo dell'Arredamento, the furnishing collection that still anchors the visit.