Palazzo Madama

In the 2000 years Torino has been around, there have been a great number of changes and additions to the city. Having been here over a month, it has been interesting to get to peal back each layer of the cities history and see things from ancient roman artifacts to new shifts as a result of the 2006 Winter Olympics. One building, however, has been here the entire time and is completely symbolic of all the changes in Torino over the last 2000 years.

After seeing the shroud on our field trip, we made our way to Palazzo Madama. Earlier I mentioned that one building was somewhat symbolic of the change Torino has undergone in the last 2000 years and this building is it. Back when the Romans settled the area, this building was actually one of the Roman Gates to the city. During the Middle ages, it was expanded to be a small fort. In the 15th century, the fort became the Castle for the Princes of Acaia. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the building became the home of the royal Dowagers of Savoy. In 1721, Maria Jeanne employed Juvarra to encase the building in a marble façade but only the front part was completed. When Napoleon took over, The Palazzo became home to the provisional French Government. In the 19th century, King Charles Albert made the Palazzo the home for the Royal painting collection as well as the home of the first Senate of Italy. Since 1934, the building has been a museum.

When we first made it into the museum, we walked into Juvarra's façade, which has been unchanged since the day work stopped on it. It was huge and incredible to say the least. On the ceiling, there were about 75 flowers, each one completely unique from all others around it and probably 3-4 feet across. Completely done in Marble, the façade looked amazing. Below are more pictures of it but it was almost hard to get good pictures of it.

The Eye in the sky...

We made our way into the museum, which is set up where the oldest stuff is on the bottom and the newer things are on the top. the moat level, therefore, houses the medieval stonework and the treasure of Desana, the ground floor houses Gothic and Renaissance artworks, the first floor housing baroque arts and the second floor housing the decorative arts, including Morano Glass and Burano Lace, Ivory, glass, jewelery and bronze works. With my art class focusing on baroque arts, we completely skipped the moat level and sped through the Renaissance/Gothic level and hurried to the Baroque floor.

The Baroque floor was interesting, we saw things like the the old royal cabinets, which had ivory and various types of wood laid into it, different rooms of the royal residence and things like that. Sadly, my camera was low on battery so i didn't get a ton of pictures. (I will be back there either this week or in three weeks and I will post more pictures when I have them)

The Rivioli Castle

From that floor, we went up one of the old turrets, built in the middle ages and got some great views of Torino and the Alps.

We cheated our final trip down and took the glass elevator

After a few hours of walking around the museum, we decided to walk back through the park to home (which turned out to be a four mile walk, a wee bit longer than I anticipated) and found this cool fountain at the end of the park.

After a long day of walking and not getting to eat, we came home and finished the day off with my second favorite pizza in Italy- Kebab pizza.

Hope you enjoyed this and have a great day!