A nice little hunting lodge.
Wednesday, December 12th, 2018
I spent a recent weekend in Torino visiting a friend. One of the places she took to me was the little hunting lodge in country built by the king of Savoy. It is called “Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi”. Palazzina is the diminutive of palazzo (palace) so the ” Little hunting palace at Stupinigi”. That last word is a place name. It’s a bit outside the city along a long straight road with trees on either side. As an aside, along the way we saw a bunch of guys and women on motorcycles and motorinos (motor scooters) wearing Santa costumes. It turns out on this date every year they have a parade in Torino of motorcycle with Santas.
Santas with bikes
More Santas
Finally we arrived at he hunting lodge. It’s really hard to imagine the scale of this place but I found an areal photo from the web. There was a little castle here since at least the 15th century but the king of Savoy decided to construct this humble hunting lodge in it’s place starting in 1729.
The humble hunting lodge
One thing that I found particularly curious was the portraits of princes and other boys of noble lineage as shown in the photo below.
Portraits of princes – yes boys were dressed the same as girls – seems a bit weird to me.
Another curiosity was the depiction of a hunt. Not my idea of hunting anything but, hey, those royals wouldn’t want to muss up their clothes.
A little hunt. Looks like an army with a large pack of dogs against one poor stag. Let’s just say that it’s unlikely that any nobles got their hands dirty in the hunt.
As you might imagine, the rooms are quite luxurious, everything has elaborate decorations. Every ceiling was quite fantastic and some of the furniture was quite incredible. Only the ground floor is open for tours. Apparently the whole palazzo was in sad shape and a number of years ago a foundation was formed to gather funds and restore much of the place.
The grand salon/ballroom at the formal entrance.
I think that this was the king’s bedroom or might have been the queen’s. They were both quite elaborate
The game room. All of the rooms have elaborately painted ceilings alike the one that you can glimpse in this photo
Incredible elaborate furniture with unbelievable workmanship. This is just one example.
Arial view photo from the web
If you’d like to learn more there’s a site that describes the residences of the Royals of Savoy. It’s hard to believe but this is just one of many. Click here:Â Stupinigi to learn more and see a bunch of great photos.
It’s definitely worth a visit.
December 12th, 2018 at 9:19 pm
looks amazing! Nice and cosy…not.
December 18th, 2018 at 11:29 pm
I’m glad that you liked it Jan – more to come.
Joe