Paslace of Venaria in Turin, admission tickets and guided tours

Admission tickets to the Palace of Venaria and Exhibition Rourte

The Royal Palace of Venaria and its complex are part of the museum circuit of Savoy residences. In 2007 the Palace was reopened to the public, displaying to the world the magnificence of its Italian Baroque style. The Palace of Venaria, with its 80,000 square meters of buildings and 60 hectares of gardens, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997.
The tour of the Palace starts at the Court of Honor, where the marvelous Water Theatre at the Fountain of the Stag is located, world-famed for its 100 jets of water, up to 12 meters high, steam, and colored pipes. Next, you'll go to the ground floor where you'll find a faithful reconstruction of the Savoy court. Going up to the "piano nobile" where the royal apartments are located, we immediately come upon the Diana Room (named for the Roman goddess of the hunt).
The recently-renovated room features ten hunting-themed paintings by Jan Miele. You'll continue through the apartments of the Duke and the Duchess, the apartments of the King and the Queen, the Great Gallery, the Alfieri Rotunda and will end in Chapel of St. Hubert. This floor has a total of over 500 works of art, including tapestries, paintings, sculptures, and silverware.
Princess Ludovica's apartment has a permanent exhibition of 17th-century paintings of famous artists, such as Guercino, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Guido Reni. The tour continues first to the Arts Room, in which many temporary exhibitions are put on year-round, and then continues to the large Juvarri's Stables, a magnificent example of 18th-century European Baroque style. Inside the stables is the Bucentaur, one of palace's most precious objects. This is the world's only extant example of a Venetian gold barge, built in Venice by Victor Amadeus II between 1729 and 1731.

Inside the Juvarri Stables as well, you can find many royal gala carriages that the Savoy had built during the 19th century, most notably a golden berlin on loan from the Quirinale in Rome.
Palace of Venaria Gardens
Last but not least, we can visit the Palace Gardens. The gardens are an open-air masterpiece which we can appreciate today thanks to the major restoration work. It includes magnificent scenic effects and spectacular views that add beauty to the flowers and bushes made to the dictates of Italian-style gardens. A canal divides the gardens between the Upper Park and the Lower Park.
The Lower Park features the Potager Royal, an approx. 10-hectare fruit orchard inside, where you also have the option of purchasing the produce grown here. The entire Potager Royal can be toured on a small train. In the Upper Park, where there are grand avenues, groves, and the Fantacasino, can be toured on a two-horse-drawn carriage. You can boat down canal separating the two parts of the garden on the gondolas of Hercules and Diana.

HISTORY OF THE PALACE OF VENARIA: The rise of the Savoy family

The Palace came to be in 1658 based on an idea of the Carl Emanuel II, Duke of Savoy, inspired by the Castle of Mirafiori, which was dedicated to his mother: Catherine Michelle of Habsburg. Carl Emanuel wanted the palace to be a celebration of himself and of his great passion — hunting. The Palace of Venaria's very name — venatario in Italian means hunting — refers to the hunt, and it is filled with images and allegories on the hunting theme. Construction was started on it even before Carl Emanuel came to power after succeeding his father, and it was built under the direction of the architects Amedeo di Castellamonte and Michelangelo Garove. Under his son Victor Amadeus II, the project was expanded on the design of Filippo Juvarra, annexing the gardens and the existing monumental building, the Grand Gallery, the Chapel of St. Hubert, the Citrus Groves, and the royal stables which were given Juvarra's name.
The Palace was completed in 1675, but it suffered structural damage caused by the French during the Siege of Turin. It was at this point that Victor Amadeus II commissioned Filippo Juvarra the remodelling and expansion work mentioned earlier. The Royal Palace of Venaria became one of the great masterpieces of the Baroque period. The Palace's decline started in the 19th century with the arrival of Napoleon, when the palace was turned into barracks and the gardens were levelled to make a square for military exercises. The rapid decline of the estate continued in the early 20th century due to vandals and its total abandonment until the 1970s when it came under the protection of the Italian government. Only the restoration that the Ministry of Heritage pursued with dedication in the 1990s, made possible by European Community funds, managed to return to their glory the spectacular frescoes, stuccos, wall structures, and enchanting gardens that had made the Palace of Venaria one of the finest European courts in the 17th and 18th centuries.