Rivoli

Rivoli climbs the last slopes where the Alps fall away toward the Po plain at the edge of Turin, crowned by a Savoy castle that was never finished and is all the more remarkable for it. Today that shell houses one of Europe’s leading museums of contemporary art, above an old town of medieval lanes.

Why visit

Rivoli’s appeal lies in a paradox: an abandoned royal dream turned into a temple of the present. The castle’s bare brick staircase and columnless base — Filippo Juvarra’s grand design for Vittorio Amedeo II, halted in the 1730s — have become part of the art experience, with site-specific commissions made for the unfinished rooms. Add the Cerruti Collection, a collector’s villa preserved as he left it, and the town’s own medieval quarter, and you have a destination that satisfies both contemporary-art pilgrims and lovers of older Italy. It also makes an effortless excursion from Turin: the Stradone del Re, the straight royal avenue now Corso Francia, still runs from the city to the castle’s foot.

Character and history

A fortified Castrum Riuollum is recorded from 1159, and Rivoli’s hill served as the first court of the Duchy of Savoy before Turin took that role; Carlo Emanuele, the future duke, was born in the castle in 1559, attended, as the story goes, by the physician and astrologer Nostradamus. In the seventeenth century the medieval fortress was remodelled into a leisure residence, gaining the Manica Lunga, a long wing built for the ducal picture gallery, before French troops burned much of the complex in the 1690s. Vittorio Amedeo II vowed to rebuild it, first through Michelangelo Garove and then Juvarra, whose palatial project from 1715 was meant to rival the great residences of Europe; rising costs and the king’s imprisonment in the castle in 1731 stopped the work for good. Later the building declined — sold to the town in 1883, occupied by troops, bombed in the Second World War — until restoration by architect Andrea Bruno prepared its rebirth in 1984 as the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, with the Manica Lunga restored to its original vocation as a home for art.

What to see

The Castle of Rivoli – Museum of Contemporary Art is the essential stop: permanent collection rooms and rotating exhibitions unfold through Juvarra’s monumental atrium and the bare historic halls, while the restored Manica Lunga continues the gallery tradition begun in the seventeenth century. A shuttle or a short drive brings you to the Cerruti Collection, Francesco Federico Cerruti’s villa-museum where gold-ground panels by Daddi and Sassetta hang near Pontormo, Guercino, Renoir, Modigliani, De Chirico and Warhol, alongside sculptures, carpets and illuminated manuscripts — some thousand works in the rooms he arranged himself. In the old town below, the House of the Green Count, a medieval dwelling now used as a civic exhibition centre, sits among lanes that climb toward the baroque Collegiate Church of Santa Maria della Stella and the gothic Bell Tower of the Ancient Collegiate Church, the survivor of the 1307 church. Porta Sorda, the only gate left of the town’s six fortified entrances, marks another fragment of the medieval wall, and the Antonio Carena House Museum preserves the studio-world of a painter rooted in the city.

How to experience

Give the castle a full morning; its scale rewards patience, and temporary exhibitions change regularly, so check the programme before travelling. Book ahead for the Cerruti Collection — visits are limited and timed, a constraint that is part of the experience, since you see the works as the collector intended, in his own rooms. Afterward, walk down into the borgo for lunch and a slow loop of the medieval lanes, bell tower to Porta Sorda. Art-minded travellers should budget a second day if a major exhibition is on, and combine Rivoli with the Reggia di Venaria Reale across the plain for a full Savoy-and-contemporary itinerary. The museum also runs performances, concerts and film events, so an evening visit can be worth planning around.

Practical planning

Rivoli lies about fifteen kilometres west of central Turin, connected by the straight line of Corso Francia and by frequent trains and buses; it is one of the easiest half-day or full-day trips from the regional capital. Parking is available near the castle hill, though spaces narrow at weekends. The castle closes on Mondays, and the Cerruti villa keeps a short weekend schedule — confirm both on castellodirivoli.org and fondazionecerruti.org, since hours shift with exhibitions. The climb through the old town is steep in places; comfortable shoes are essential. The museum bookshop and café make a natural rest point, and the castle terrace opens one of the widest views over the plain toward Turin and the Alps beyond.

Nearby places

• Venaria Reale — the restored Savoy mega-residence and gardens on Turin’s northern edge.
• Agliè — a village castle of the dukes of Abruzzé in the Canavese, north of Turin.
• Ivrea — the Olivetti industrial town and its twentieth-century architecture, further north.