Villa della Regina

The Villa della Regina is a historic palace situated on the hills in the eastern Borgo Po quarter of Turin, Piedmont, Italy. Originally constructed as a semi-rural retreat with its own vineyard by the House of Savoy in the seventeenth century, the estate became closely associated with the queens of Savoy, which gave the building its enduring name. Recognized for its architectural and historical significance, the villa was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, joining thirteen other Savoyard residences in the serial designation. Today, the property is state-owned and open to the public, serving as a documented site of Savoy court culture and baroque design.

The original structure was designed around 1615 by the architect and military engineer Ascanio Vitozzi. Following his death that same year, the project was continued by his collaborators, the father and son team Carlo and Amedeo di Castellamonte. The building was commissioned for the Prince-Cardinal Maurice of Savoy during the reign of his brother, Duke Victor Amadeus I. Following a succession crisis after the duke's death in 1637, Maurice resigned his cardinalate, married his fourteen-year-old niece Louise Christine of Savoy in 1642, and lived at the villa until his death there in 1657. His wife inherited the property and its art collection, residing there until her own death in 1692. The villa then passed to her niece, Anne Marie d'Orleans, wife of Victor Amadeus II. When Victor Amadeus exchanged Sicily for Sardinia in 1720, the building became known as the Villa della Regina. Anne Marie died there in 1728, and the property passed to her daughter-in-law, Polyxena of Hesse-Rotenburg, who completed further refurbishments. The villa later hosted the Spanish Queen of Sardinia, Maria Antonietta Ferdinanda, and even Napoleon during his 1805 occupation. It remained a private Savoyard possession until 1868, when Victor Emmanuel II donated it to the National Institute of the Daughters of the Italian Army. The institute transferred the property to state domain in 1994.

The interior of the villa is characterized by its elaborate frescoed decor and refined architectural details, largely dating to the lifetime of Anne Marie d'Orleans and the subsequent refurbishments of the 1730s. The palace was divided into apartments for the king and queen, with ceilings frescoed by Claudio Francesco Belmont. The main saloon and entrance hall feature frescoed quadratura and panel paintings by Giovanni Battista Crosato, Daniel Seyter, and Corrado Giaquinto, alongside grotesques by Filippo Minei and paintings by the brothers Domenico and Giuseppe Valeriani. The villa also contains precious chinoiserie cabinets decorated in lacquer and golden wood, reflecting the eighteenth-century aristocratic taste for exoticism. Much of the original furniture and art was dispersed when the court moved; some pieces, including a boiseries from one of the Chinese saloons and a famous library by ebenist Pietro Piffetti, were transferred to the Quirinal Palace in Rome during the reign of Umberto I.

Among the most significant works associated with the villa are the canvases by Corrado Giaquinto depicting the Story of Aeneas, which were moved to the Quirinal Palace in Rome. The main room originally featured a central fresco representing Aurora by the Valeriani brothers, and a vault fresco of Olympus by Giaquinto, both of which were destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. A chapel in the adjacent Palazzo del Chiablese, which was also completely destroyed in the war, housed an altarpiece by Daniel Seyter depicting the Madonna with the Child Jesus and Saint Genevieve. The park contains the Pavilion of the Solinghi, a pagoda-style building that housed the Academy of the Solinghi, an intellectual group founded by Cardinal Maurice that included the Savoyard historian Emanuele Tesauro and the future Pope Innocent X.

The villa is situated on the watershed between the Val San Martino and the Val Salice, at the foot of the Villa Genero city park. The architecture is typically seventeenth-century in form, featuring a celebrated Italian garden laid out as an amphitheater behind the palace. The exterior layout consists of an elliptical plaza-terrace that leads to an upper rectangular courtyard containing the main castle structure, flanked by a building to the left and a terrace to the right. The terraced hillside garden features belvederes, decorative fountains, grottoes, a chain water feature, and a prominent teatro delle acque, or water theater. The vineyard, historically integral to the estate, was replanted during modern restorations, allowing for the first harvest of freisa di Chieri grapes in 2008.

The Villa della Regina is located at Strada Santa Margherita in Turin. After decades of neglect and severe damage from allied bombings during the Second World War, the property underwent over ten years of restoration by the Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici del Piemonte, culminating in its reopening to the public in 2007. The site is accessible from the road ascending the hill from the church of the Gran Madre di Dio. Both the exterior gardens and the interior are open to visitors, though reservations are mandatory for groups. The villa relies on public visitation to fund its ongoing maintenance. In 2016, the residence recorded 60,662 visitors. It has also served as a location for film and television productions, including a 1909 silent short film and a 2014 miniseries.