Chiesa della Visitazione di Maria Vergine

Facing the Palazzina's forecourt, the parish church of the borgo di Stupinigi was inaugurated in 1739 as a Juvarra-attributed counterpart to the court's own chapel. Simple inside and bright, it preserves the relics of Saint Hubert entrusted to the Dukes of Savoy by the pope in 1669.

Why it matters

At Stupinigi, the ceremonial chapel for the court stood alongside a parish church for the people who lived and worked in the borgo. At Stupinigi the second role belongs to the Chiesa della Visitazione di Maria Vergine, standing in the borgo at the foot of the palace square. Attributed to Filippo Juvarra and inaugurated in 1739, it remains the historic parish of the frazione, where farmers, coachmen, stablehands and their descendants were baptised, married and buried for nearly three centuries.

What to notice

The contrast with the palace chapel is the point. Where the court's Sant'Uberto chapel answers the gilded salone, the parish church is a single nave under a barrel vault, plain in structure and decoration, sized to the congregations of the surrounding cascina farms. The reliquary cases contain relics of Sant’Uberto, patron of hunters, entrusted by the pope to the Dukes of Savoy in 1669. The interior also retains a main altar with side altars, pulpit, organ, baptismal font and choir fittings typical of an eighteenth-century rural parish, and on the exterior the church carries a sundial. The facade addresses the piazza rather than competing with the palace.

Context and history

A church stood at Stupinigi long before Juvarra: the parish dates its origins to 1487, when a place of worship faced the old Castelvecchio of the Savoia-Acaia. That earlier building was demolished to make way for the grandiose new hunting residence commissioned by Vittorio Amedeo II from 1729, The present church, dedicated to the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, was inaugurated in 1739 within the Palazzina complex. At the close of the eighteenth century the building was enlarged to a design by Ludovico Bo, and a cemetery was laid out beyond it. While the court worshipped in its palatine chapel, the parish served the farming families of the royal farms; after the court era it became simply the parish church of the borgo, a role it continues to perform.