Arco Trionfale

Savigliano's brick-and-stone arch was raised in 1585 to honour a royal wedding procession. Between Piazza Santa Rosa and via Sant'Andrea, it preserves traces of its original fresco decoration and a story of ducal spectacle, Napoleonic loss and modern restoration.

Why it matters

The arch commemorates one of the great set-piece events of sixteenth-century Piedmont: the wedding journey of Duke Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy and Caterina, daughter of the King of Spain. Work began on 9 May 1585 in time for the couple's passage that July, as the bridal party travelled from Zaragoza, through Ceva and on towards Turin and Moncalieri. An earlier temporary arch had been built here in 1560 for a visit by Emanuele Filiberto. What makes Savigliano unusual is that its 1585 arch became permanent, and that it was deliberately sited in the heart of the city rather than at the gates.

What to notice

The arch stands mid-city, on the route taken by the arriving couple from Borgo Pieve along via Sant'Andrea. The side facing the piazza carries two pairs of columns framing niches that once held celebratory statues of the sovereigns — the statues themselves were removed and destroyed during the Napoleonic period. Above the columns runs a broad entablature and an attic level, intended for an inscribed plaque and the crest of Savoy.

The 1997 restoration brought patches of the original fresco decoration under the vault back to light and gave the monument a renewed polychrome surface; the white columns that rhythm the structure date in their present brilliance from that campaign. The Latin inscription on the upper part, "Vindicatae libertati sacrum" — dedicated to hard-won liberty — was added in 1965 for the twentieth anniversary of the Resistance, an unexpected twentieth-century layer on a Renaissance monument. The arch is about ten metres high, five metres wide and four metres deep. The architect Maurizio Eula opened a lateral passage around 1845 to connect it with the porticoes.

Context and history

The original project is attributed to the Turin architect Giovanni Battista Ripa, with decorations by the Saviglianese painter Giovanni Angelo Dolce. The design recalls ancient models such as the Arch of Titus in Rome and the Arch of Trajan at Benevento. Across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the arch was repeatedly touched up — painted parts and architectural elements alike — whenever solemn events or royal visits gave reason. The nineteenth century added Eula's side passage; the twentieth added the Resistance inscription and, in 1997, the restoration that recovered the sub-vault fresco fragments. A small interior room within the arch recalls its use as a working structure.