In 1563, with the transfer of the capital of the duchy from Chambéry to Turin, Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy established his residence in the bishop’s palace, near the Cathedral.
Already in 1584, however, Carlo Emanuele I entrusted the architect Ascanio Vittozzi with the construction of a new building. After 1643, with the regency of Maria Cristina of France, the direction of the work passed to Carlo di Castellamonte and then to Carlo Morello.
At the same time, the parade halls on the first floor were being furnished, characterized by the richly carved and gilded wooden ceilings with large allegorical canvases by Jan Miel and Charles Dauphin, whose subjects exalt the virtues of the sovereign according to an iconographic program dictated by the court rhetorician Emanuele Tesauro.
In 1688, the painter Daniel Seiter was called from Rome to fresco the gallery thereafter called the “Daniel Gallery.” Seiter, assisted by the Genoese painter Bartolomeo Guidobono, also worked on the ground floor apartment, later called Madama Felicita’s. At the end of the seventeenth century, the garden layout was revised and enlarged by the famous French architect André Le Notre.
When Vittorio Amedeo II obtained the royal title in 1713, the so-called “command zone” was created, annexed to the palace and consisting of the Secretariats, Offices, the Royal Theater, and the State Archives.
The architect from Messina Filippo Juvarra was the director of these interventions, who within the palace created the daring Scissors Staircase and the Chinese Cabinet. Several rooms are decorated with paintings by Claudio Francesco Beaumont, official painter of Carlo Emanuele III, who ascended the throne in 1730.
Upon Juvarra’s departure for Madrid, the position of chief royal architect passed to Benedetto Alfieri, who defined the decorative apparatus of the apartments on the second floor, renovated the Daniel Gallery, and set up the new Archive chambers, frescoed by Francesco De Mura and Gregorio Guglielmi.
During the time of Carlo Alberto (1831-1849), some rooms of the main floor were renovated under the direction of the Bolognese Pelagio Palagi, such as the Hall of the Swiss and the Council Room, as well as part of the apartments on the second floor.
On the eve of the Unification of Italy, in 1862, the new main staircase was built. With the transfer of the capital from Turin to Florence and then to Rome, the palace gradually lost its residential functions; since 1955 it has been under the responsibility of the Superintendency for Architectural and Landscape Heritage.
