Villa della Regina

The 'vineyard' on the hill
Perched on the Turin hillside and overlooking the city centre, The Villa of the Queen is a truly scenic backdrop to Turin, surrounded by evocative Italian-style gardens with water features, grottoes and newly productive agricultural areas. Its name derives from the fact that it is intended for women: this residence was the prerogative of the Savoy wives, who shaped it by infusing it with their refined taste.

The construction
Created around 1615 as a vineyard, i.e. a hillside residence, for Cardinal Maurice of Savoy, the property then passed to his young niece, Princess Ludovica Christine, whom he married in 1642 after leaving the priesthood. From then on until the mid-19^th century, it became the favourite residence of princesses, duchesses and queens of the House of Savoy.

The fine workmanship for queens
With the passage to Anne Marie d'Orléans, consort of Victor Amadeus II, significant renovation works began on the building: in 1713 the couple became the King and Queen, the residence took the name Vigna della Regina and was radically transformed according to the designs of the new court architect Filippo Juvarra. The rooms on the piano nobile, divided into a separate apartment for the queen and one for the king, had elegant white stucco vaults embellished with paintings by the painter Claudio Francesco Beaumont.
From the 1730s, Juvarra's projects for Villa della Regina were carried out by his student, Giovanni Pietro Baroni di Tavigliano. This is when the large entrance hall to the Villa was frescoed by painters Giuseppe Dallamano, Giambattista Crosato and Corrado Giaquinto. In the same years, the four cabinets (sitting areas) located in the corner towers were decorated and furnished with Chinese-style objects according to the taste for the Orient popular in 18^th-century European courts.

A girls' boarding school for the Daughters of the Military
In 1865, the villa ceased to be a court residence and became the seat of the National Institute of the Daughters of the Military. Spaces were used as classrooms, reception rooms for visiting dignitaries, and bedrooms for the headmistress and teaching staff. Some of the original furnishings were moved by the House of Savoy to Rome to decorate the rooms of the Quirinal Palace: the panels that decorated one of the Chinese cabinets, the library created by the famous cabinet-maker Pietro Piffetti for Charles Emmanuel III, and the paintings by Corrado Giaquinto depicting the Story of Aeneas.
The bombings of 1942-1943 and a robbery in 1979, following the abolition of the National Institute of the Daughters of the Military in 1975, caused further damage, particularly to the Queen’s Apartment.

Renovation and opening to the public
The renovation of Villa of the Queen, undertaken since 1994 by the Department and public and private bodies and institutions, was made possible by a pioneering restoration and study project. In 2008, the first new grape harvest from the vineyard replanted on the hillside celebrated the long-awaited reopening to the public.