Piazza della SS. Annunziata

Every planned baroque town needs a stage, and Venaria Reale's is Piazza della SS. Annunziata. Shaped by Amedeo di Castellamonte as an ellipse recalling the collar of the Savoy's oldest knightly order, and marked by two columns of 1678 with statues by the Carlone brothers, the square is the ceremonial gateway between the old town and the royal palace.

Why it matters

The square is the key to understanding Venaria Reale as a designed town rather than an accidental one. Amedeo di Castellamonte, the court architect behind the Reggia, broke the long straight line of the main street in the second half of the seventeenth century with this wide elliptical space, creating a scenic pause before the view opens onto the palace. Its shape is symbolic: it evokes the central medallion of the Collare dell'Annunziata, emblem of the most prestigious order of chivalry of the House of Savoy, announcing whose town the visitor is entering. Today the square functions exactly as designed — the prelude to the Reggia axis and the living centre of the borgo antico, still owned by the civic life it was built to stage.

What to notice

Two semicircular arcs face each other across the space, each centred on a column. Each column carries one figure of the Annunciation — the Virgin and the Angel addressing each other across the square, a staging of the scene at urban scale that is rare. The carving dates to 1678 and is the work of Giuseppe Maria and Giovanni Domenico Carlone, two sculptors from Lugano. Look at the church facades that enclose the arcs: the same two Carlone sculptors provided four statues of the Evangelists in 1678 for these fronts. Note the single flanking church and the missing twin — Castellamonte planned a matching church on the opposite side, of which only the facade was ever built, on the site of today's hospital. The long street axis connects the square's urban composition with the Reggia.

Context and history

The square belongs to the same founding moment as the palace. After Carlo Emanuele II began his hunting residence in the late 1650s with Castellamonte as architect, the new town of Venaria grew along the road to it, and an inscription above the parish church portal records the duke founding the city in 1662 under the protection of the Nativity of the Virgin. Castellamonte laid out the piazza in the second half of the seventeenth century as a scenographic widening of the main street — later via Carlo Alberto, today via Mensa — splitting it into two sections whose axes converge on the palace. The Carlone brothers' Annunciation statues of 1678 and their Evangelists of the same year gave the ensemble its sculpture. The square's civic character complements the ceremonial architecture of the royal residence.