Il Palazzo Carignano was built by the will of Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia-Carignano, designed by his father Guarino Guarini, a Theatine, who began its construction in 1679. It is one of the most striking and impressive palaces of the Italian seventeenth century, with a sinuous façade and simple brick cladding, exquisitely and originally worked.
The building was erected in the area used as stables by Prince Tommaso, founder of the Savoia-Carignano cadet branch, and originally had a C-shaped plan open to the gardens; the current quadrangular structure is due to the addition of the nineteenth-century wing built to house the Italian Parliament, completed in 1871, after the capital moved to Rome. The central elliptical hall located in the seventeenth-century section, originally intended for festivities, was transformed in 1848 into the chamber of the First Subalpine Parliament. The Palace houses in the noble floor rooms the National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento and on the ground floor the offices of the Piedmont Museum Pole, as well as some offices of the Superintendency for Fine Arts and Landscape of Turin.
Reopened to the public in 2011 thanks to the support of the Compagnia di San Paolo, with an exhibition dedicated to Stefano Maria Legnani called il Legnanino, the talented painter who decorated its interiors in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, after half a century it is currently accessible with a permanent tour of the Mezzogiorno apartment, also called the Princes’ apartment. It is a path conceived ‘in progress’, intended to expand and enrich over time as investigations underway increase the level of knowledge about the palace, its events, and the characters who lived there.
Information about Palazzo Carignano
Via Accademia delle Scienze, 5
10123 Turin (Turin)
011 5641791
pm-pie.palazzocarignano@beniculturali.it
https://www.polomusealepiemonte.beniculturali.it
Source: MIBACT
