Exhibits at the Venaria Reale

OK, of course you don’t remember what exactly the Venaria Reale is. I did a blog post about a visit there (Another Trip to Torino) and since it is so vast it was impossible to see everything. So Laura and I returned for another dose of Torinese culture. This time we went for the stables. They’re not your ordinary stables; they could house 160 horses and there is also the Citroniera (big greenhouse for citrus). That all come out to roughly 54,000 square feet that has all been converted to other uses including several exhibition spaces. We didn’t see everything by any means. We saw 3 exhibits in all. “Easy Rider” had a bunch of motorcycles including the one used in the movie of that name.

Then we saw an exhibit of the works of this guy below. This is one of his most famous photos but he did a lot of very interesting stuff and naturally I took no photos of his photos and they are all copyrighted and difficult to find available on the web. But it’s worth a Google search to see some of his stuff.

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And then the exhibit that impressed me most of all. Furniture. I did amateur woodworking for over 10 years and really appreciate artistry in that medium. All pieces by a guy (Pietro Piffetti) who lived his entire life in Torino other than an apprenticeship in Rome. Now considering that this was in the mid 1700s when he was doing this work, it is absolutely astounding considering the tools available almost 300 years ago.

The furniture is made of fine woods with marquetry using other woods and non-wood materials including mother of pearl, ivory, tortoise shell and colored stones to make a design. Needless to say I was quite impressed.

We didn’t stroll through the gardens. Well, stroll would be an understatement since the gardens since the gardens are about 150 acres in size.

Well, we’ll just have to go back. It should be better in spring time anyway.

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