Parco e Giardini del Castello Reale di Racconigi

Around the Royal Castle of Racconigi stretches a park of roughly two hundred hectares, reshaped in the nineteenth century into an English-style romantic landscape. Centuries-old trees, water features and woodland paths form a landscape ensemble with the royal greenhouses and Giardino dei Principini.

Why it matters

The park was an important part of Racconigi's development as a royal seat. When Carlo Alberto took the throne in 1832, the Prussian landscape architect Xavier Kurten reworked the grounds in the romantic, naturalistic taste of the age, integrating older formal layouts into sweeping woodland scenery. The Italian museum authorities describe the result — centuries-old trees, winding paths, water features — as one of Europe's most significant expressions of Romantic-era sensitivity to nature. The landscape design framed the castle's façade through changing views among the trees.

What to notice

The park contrasts older formal layouts near the castle with Kurten's naturalistic English landscape. The Serre Reali, royal greenhouses, and the Giardino dei Principini form part of the designed ensemble. Ponds, channels and tree-lined vistas structure the landscape. The Margaria farm complex lies at the far end of the grounds. The park's wildlife includes herons, woodpeckers and white storks associated with the Centro Cicogne e Anatidi.

Context and history

Grounds have surrounded the castle since the Savoy-Carignano era, when the building served for leisure and hunting — Guarino Guarini had recast the medieval core from 1676, and Giovanni Battista Borra completed the monumental neoclassical range in the mid-eighteenth century. The decisive transformation came in the nineteenth century: after Carlo Alberto's accession, Kurten reimagined the estate as a romantic English park, in the same campaign that produced Pelagio Palagi's neo-Gothic greenhouses and farm buildings. The landscape thus records, in planted form, the same cultural shift visible inside the palace — from baroque formality to nineteenth-century feeling for wild nature. The State acquired the residence and park in 1980; both were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List with the other Savoy Residences in 1997.