La Bizzarrìa: A Nineteenth-Century Hunting Pavilion in Italy
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Modern
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- Italian
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Elite Residence
On this page7 sections
History
La Bizzarrìa is a villa and hunting pavilion in Italy, at Venaria Reale, built for Vittorio Emanuele II between 1860 and 1863 in an imaginative eclectic style. Vittorio Emanuele II was king of Sardinia from 1849 and became the first king of unified Italy in 1861. The building formed part of the extensive remodelling of the La Mandria estate after it became his private property.
Construction at La Mandria
The redevelopment of La Mandria included a boundary wall, roads, bridges, service buildings, residences, and guard buildings. La Bizzarrìa was commissioned as both a hunting rest pavilion and a residence for the king, Rosa Vercellana, and their two children, Vittoria and Emanuele. Vercellana, known as the Bela Rosin, was Vittorio Emanuele II’s longtime companion and later his morganatic wife, a marriage between a person of royal rank and a partner of lower social status that did not give the partner equal dynastic standing.
Construction is dated more specifically to 1860–1863, while the villa itself is also described as having been built between 1861 and 1862. The work was undertaken by the enterprise of Leopoldo Galli, an architect from Ticino, a Swiss canton, who directed the large construction site. Barnaba Panizza, a court architect, often supervised administrative matters connected with Galli’s work at Savoy residences and other buildings.
A Hunting Pavilion in an Enlarged Estate
La Bizzarrìa belonged to Vittorio Emanuele II’s wider plan to renovate and enlarge Borgo Castello, a named architectural complex within La Mandria park. Villa dei Laghi, another hunting rest pavilion, was built during the same period beside an artificial lake. The name La Bizzarrìa refers to the building’s extreme eclecticism, combining forms and motifs from different architectural traditions. It also evokes bizzarria, the deliberate departure from accepted principles through extraordinary and novel forms.
Collapse and Restoration
After a period of abandonment, several vaults collapsed. In November 1976, the Piedmont Region approved restoration within a broader programme to recover the regional park. Roberto Gabetti and Aimaro Isola restored La Bizzarrìa between 1975 and 1981. They first inspected the ruin in the winter of 1975 and submitted a preliminary project in October 1977. Their intervention treated the building as an ephemeral ruin, rebuilding its exterior and perimeter rooms while preserving the central space formed by the collapsed vaults. La Bizzarrìa is part of La Mandria natural park and is currently in use.
Remains
Geometric Form and Access
La Bizzarrìa is a small hunting reposoir, a pavilion intended for rest within a park or estate. Its plan is based on a triangle, with a cylindrical tower at each vertex. This arrangement creates a hexagonal interior space that was originally repeated over three levels, giving the building its complex geometry.
Two elliptical staircases provide access to the interior. A semicircular staircase with two flights leads directly to the terrace. From there, porticoes attached to the projecting central body and the small towers provide entry to the central hall. The arrangement combines the practical requirements of a hunting lodge or belvedere with an unusually elaborate architectural composition.
Decorative Treatment and Restored Interior
Ramage frescoes, using foliage and branch-like ornament, and trompe-l’oeil painting decorated the interior and exterior. Trompe-l’oeil is illusionistic painting intended to make a flat surface appear three-dimensional. These treatments reinforced the building’s imaginative character and its departure from a single historical style.
Before restoration, the upper vault had fallen onto the vaults below, creating one large central space. The restoration rebuilt the external form and the rooms around the perimeter but retained this enlarged volume. A floor was installed over the reconstructed vault, while the central space received a transparent ceiling. The two vaults that were not rebuilt are marked by polygonal mirror rings set into lightweight panels.
Light passing through the restored vault creates kaleidoscopic effects, with repeated images and an impression of uncertain depth. The restoration work was carried out by the Guerrini brothers of Turin, preserving the open central space as the defining feature of the building’s present interior.
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