Palazzina di caccia of Stupinigi: A Savoy Royal Hunting Residence in Italy
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History
The Palazzina di caccia of Stupinigi is a Savoy royal hunting residence in Stupinigi, Italy, near Turin, created in the late Baroque and Italian Rococo styles from 1729. The palace formed part of the wider Stupinigi domains, which included a hunting estate surrounding the formal park. Its development transformed an older fortified territory into a residence used by the Savoy court for hunts, receptions, dynastic celebrations, and brief stays.
From medieval fortification to Savoy hunting ground
The medieval territory was known as Suppunicum and contained a small castle east of the present palace. The castle belonged to the Acaja branch of the House of Savoy and had served to defend Moncalieri. During the fifteenth century it passed to the Pallavicino family. Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy recovered the castle from the Pallavicini in 1563 and 1564, then assigned it and the adjoining lands to the Mauritian Order, formally the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus.
The order was a chivalric and religious institution headed by the Savoy ruler, so the fortification and its territory remained under direct Savoy administration. Under Emmanuel Philibert, the surrounding land became a preferred hunting ground for the duke and his court. This connection between the order, the dynasty, and the estate continued after the medieval castle had ceased to define the character of Stupinigi.
Juvarra’s royal residence
In April 1729 Victor Amadeus II commissioned Filippo Juvarra to remake the complex as a royal hunting residence suited to the newly royal status of the House of Savoy. Juvarra, an Italian architect and stage designer known for late-Baroque projects at European courts, began the construction that same year. The first formal hunt took place in 1731, and the palazzina was inaugurated for the feast of Saint Hubert later that year.
The principal construction phase continued through 1735 to 1737, when the royal apartments were completed and decorated. Juvarra’s departure for the Spanish court left some work unfinished, and Giovanni Tommaso Prunotto, his assistant and successor in directing the works, supervised later completion. The complex entered fully into court life in May 1739, after the interruption caused by the War of the Polish Succession, a European conflict over the succession to the Polish throne. That month, Francis I, then grand duke of Tuscany and later Holy Roman Emperor, visited Turin.
In the eighteenth century Stupinigi generally served as a hunting lodge and a place for stays of one or two nights. Venaria and Moncalieri remained the court’s principal residences, while Stupinigi had no independent governor before the Restoration, the period when the Savoy monarchy was restored after French rule. During the reigns of Charles Emmanuel III and Victor Amadeus III, Giovanni Tommaso Prunotto, Ludovico Bo, Benedetto Alfieri, Ignazio Birago di Borgaro, and Ignazio Bertola participated in enlargements. Two wings containing stables and agricultural service buildings were added in 1740.
Court ceremonies and administration
From the 1760s the palace was also used for important court receptions. In 1773 Princess Maria Theresa of Savoy married Charles Philippe, Count of Artois, there. He later became Charles X of France. Other distinguished visitors included Joseph II in 1769, the future Paul I of Russia and his wife in 1782, and Ferdinand I of Naples with Queen Carolina in 1785.
Stupinigi’s administration reflected its specialized hunting role. From 1751 to 1836 its governor also commanded Venaria’s hunting staff and was subordinate to the governor of Venaria, who held the office of grand hunter of Savoy. The three commanders of Stupinigi during this period were Paolo Giuseppe Avogadro di Casanova, Luigi Ciaffaleone di Villabona, and Luigi Umoglio della Vernea. Umoglio lost his office during the French occupation of 1796 and regained it at the Restoration.
Napoleon Bonaparte stayed at Stupinigi from 5 to 16 May 1805 before travelling to Milan for his coronation as king of Italy. During his stay he received Turin’s mayor, magistrates, and clergy, including Archbishop Carlo Luigi Buronzo del Signore. Paolina Bonaparte and her husband, Camillo Borghese, stayed at the palace in 1808. In 1832 the palazzina returned to the ownership of the royal family, and on 12 April 1842 it hosted the marriage of Victor Emmanuel II, the future first king of Italy, and Maria Adelaide of Austria.
Menagerie, ownership, and preservation
A royal menagerie was established at Stupinigi in 1814. In 1826 the animals were moved into the building now called the San Carlo structure, partly to protect exotic species from the Piedmontese climate. The collection supplied animals for court entertainment and breeding, provided game for hunts, and formed part of an estate where approximately 2,000 fallow deer were kept.
In 1826 Mehmet Ali, the governor of Egypt, presented Charles Felix of Savoy with an Indian elephant named Fritz. The animal entered the estate ceremonially on 4 June 1827 and remained there until 3 November 1847, when it killed its newly assigned keeper, a twenty-nine-year-old man. Fritz was killed by asphyxiation on 8 November 1852, aged fifty-three, after the accident and because its annual maintenance cost was about 17,000 lire. Its skin went to what is now the Regional Museum of Natural Sciences in Turin, while the other animals, including the hunting horses, were moved to the Royal Palace garden in Turin.
The complex entered the state domain in 1919 and returned, together with the surrounding properties, to the Mauritian Order in 1925. Since 1919 it has housed the Museum of Art and Furnishings, whose holdings include furniture from Savoy residences and objects from the courts of pre-unification Italy, including the Bourbon court of Parma and the Ducal Palace of Colorno. A long restoration campaign began in 1988 under Roberto Gabetti, Maurizio Momo, and the Isolarchitetti studio, including Aimaro Oreglia d’Isola. In February 2004, 27 objects and four paintings were stolen from the collections; all were recovered in good condition in November 2005.
The surrounding hunting estate once covered almost 1,700 hectares of land and woodland in areas now belonging to Nichelino, Orbassano, and Candiolo. Since 1992, its remaining lowland woodland and agricultural land have been protected as the Stupinigi Natural Park. The palazzina forms part of the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy, which UNESCO inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1997 under criteria (i), (ii), (iv), and (v).
Remains
The palace is organized around a central axis and a large oval hall in a late-Baroque and Italian Rococo design. Four lower arms project diagonally from the central core in the form of a saltire, or Saint Andrew’s Cross, containing royal and guest apartments. The axis follows the route from Turin along a long tree-lined avenue bordered by farms, stables, and former dependencies. In front of the core, the palace encloses a large octagonal courtyard whose edges are occupied by service buildings. Later work added separate pavilions, angled galleries, and two further entrance courts.
Central hall and ceremonial spaces
The double-height central hall is covered by a dome and vaulted ceiling. Its balconies follow concave and convex curves, while the dome originally carried Francesco Ladatte’s statue of a stag. Hounds’ heads decorate vases along the roofline, reinforcing the building’s hunting purpose. The hall’s masonry was substantially complete by 1730. On 10 February 1731 Victor Amadeus II commissioned the Bolognese brothers Giuseppe and Domenico Valeriani to paint The Triumph of Diana across the vault. Work began on 8 March and ended in 1733.
The fresco presents Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, above a wooded landscape in a celestial chariot. Putti carrying game, floral garlands, nymphs, and woodland spirits surround her, while four monochrome medallions show further episodes associated with the goddess. Painted architectural perspectives frame the composition and extend the hall’s real structure through illusion. Juvarra’s proposed sculptural groups of dogs and deer beside the windows were abandoned so that they would not obstruct the outward view. Giuseppe Marocco’s alternative produced 36 wooden wall appliques with deer heads. The upper singers’ balustrade has gilded wood inlays, and Giovanni Crivelli painted the decorative fire-screens in 1733.
Four marble busts by Giovanni Battista Bernero, made in 1773, stand above the hall’s four entrances. They represent Ceres and Pomona, Roman agricultural deities, together with a Naiad, a freshwater nymph, and a Napea, a woodland nymph. The entrance leads to the Galleria dei Ritratti, formerly part of Juvarra’s lateral stables. Carriages and horses were kept there during hunts. The gallery now contains Ladatte’s original stag, made in 1766 and moved indoors in 1992, while a modern bronze copy occupies the dome for conservation reasons.
Royal apartments
The interiors cover about 31,000 square metres, while adjacent structures account for approximately 14,000 square metres. The complex contains 137 rooms and 17 galleries. Lacquers, porcelain, gilded stucco, mirrors, wood veneers, and other precious materials shape the decoration. Furniture made for the palace includes works by Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo, Pietro Piffetti, and Luigi Prinotto. Paintings and frescoes include works by Giuseppe and Domenico Valeriani, Gaetano Perego, Christan Wehrlin, Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli, Gian Battista Crosato, and Carlo Andrea Van Loo.
The Apartment of the Duke of Chablais, also called the Apartment of Levante, was enlarged by Benedetto Alfieri for Benedetto of Savoy, Duke of Chablais and son of Charles Emmanuel III. Its gambling hall is a rectangular room with rounded corners and two large niches. Giovanni Pietro Pozzo decorated the ceiling in 1765 with exotic and oriental motifs. The furnishings include a mid-eighteenth-century drawing room, a Louis XV game table with an ebony-and-ivory chessboard, and an early-eighteenth-century desk with ivory inlays. An adjoining Rococo room has stucco and mirrors extending from the walls to the ceiling. Pozzo designed it in 1766, and Michele Antonio Rapous executed its decorative wood panelling. A chandelier from the 1740s carries wrought-iron birds.
The small Cabinet of Paolina Bonaparte retains the form given to it during Paolina’s stay. Its marble bathtub is decorated with imperial insignia and the Napoleonic eagle. The Apartment of the Queen was created in the 1730s for Polissena of Hesse-Rotenburg, wife of Charles Emmanuel III, during seasonal hunting visits. In its antechamber, one of the four rooms opening onto the central hall, Gian Battista Crosato painted The Sacrifice of Iphigenia and eighteenth-century views between 1733 and 1734. Francesco Casoli added frescoes in 1738 and 1739, and Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo remodelled part of the room in the Louis XVI style from 1786. Four oval portraits of Savoy princesses hang within blue-glass and gilded-metal frames by Bonzanigo.
The Queen’s adjoining bedroom has Charles-André van Loo’s ceiling fresco of Diana resting among nymphs, together with period wood panelling and Rocaille decoration. Its dressing cabinet contains Chinese figures and polychrome putti. The Apartment of the King was created for Charles Emmanuel III in the early 1730s and remodelled for Victor Amadeus III during the second half of the century. It comprised an antechamber, bedroom, and dressing cabinet.
The Hall of the Squires, connected to the central hall, was among the first rooms decorated. In 1733 Giovanni Battista Crosato and Gerolamo Mengozzi Colonna painted mythological scenes there. Painted doors and overdoors from 1778 show deer-hunting scenes by Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli. The King’s antechamber was completed in 1737 under Prunotto after Juvarra’s departure. Michele Antonio Milocco painted episodes from the myth of Diana under the direction of Claudio Francesco Beaumont. The room contains Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture, overdoors by Pietro Domenico Olivero, and portraits signed by Jean-Etienne Liotard.
The King’s bedroom has wall fabric remade after the Second World War following severe earlier damage. It also contains paintings by Liotard, overdoors with grotesque decoration by Giovanni Francesco Fariano, and a prie-dieu and medallion cabinet by Pietro Piffetti. The adjoining cabinet holds Martin van Meytens’s portrait of Queen Polissena Cristina of Hesse-Rotenburg with her children.
Chapel and former service buildings
A room formerly known as the Hall of the Buffets became the Chapel of Saint Hubert in 1767. It served as an ante-chapel connected to the actual religious space behind the main wall, normally concealed by two large painted wooden shutters. Ignazio Birago, Giacomo Borri, Ignazio Nipote, and Gaetano Perego worked on its ceiling and stucco decoration.
Former stable space near the Galleria dei Ritratti was later reduced to create libraries. Benedetto Alfieri designed their shelving in blue, ivory, and gold, with Giuseppe Nogari’s allegories of the arts and sciences. The former menagerie occupied adapted service buildings, including the present San Carlo structure. Wooden elements there retain damage caused by Fritz before the elephant’s death.
Garden, park, and collections
The palace garden is separate from the wider hunting estate. Enclosed by a wall, it is a geometric design of flowerbeds, formal beds, and long avenues created in 1740 by the French gardener Michael Benard. The garden covers about 150,000 square metres, while the exterior flowerbeds account for approximately 3,800 square metres.
The Stupinigi Natural Park covers 17.32 square kilometres across Nichelino, Candiolo, and Orbassano. It preserves part of the region’s original lowland forest and supports rare plant species, beech martens, weasels, foxes, hazel dormice, European hares, white storks, and tree squirrels.
The Museum of Art and Furnishings contains furniture made for Stupinigi and objects transferred from former Savoy residences, especially Moncalieri Castle and Venaria Reale. Its collections include works by Bonzanigo, Piffetti, and Prinotto, as well as hunting-figure sculptures by Giovanni Battista Bernero. The galleries also accommodate temporary exhibitions.
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