Turin, Chiablese Duke's apartment reopens after lengthy restoration

Reopened to the public from Monday, May 23, 2022, with a new tour route, theapartment of the Duke of Chiablese, commissioned by Charles Emmanuel III for his son Benedetto Maurizio and entrusted to the mastery of court architect Benedetto Alfieri. The apartment has been the subject of a lengthy restoration project promoted by the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the Metropolitan City of Turin and carried out by the Centro Conservazione e Restauro “La Venaria Reale”: the conservative interventions started in 2016 thanks to the support of the Consulta per la valorizzazione dei beni artistici e culturali di Torino with the restoration of the Gabinetto degli Specchi and the Gabinetto doppio. The project then continued in 2019 with the complex restoration of the Alcove Chamber, followed in 2020 by interventions in the Duke’s audience and bedchambers. Finally, the tour route was expanded in 2021 with the restoration of the former Alcove Room, the Drawing Room adjacent to the Alcove Room, the Bathing Room, and the Passageway with the Guardarobes, as well as the recovery of movable furniture functional to the refurbishment of the rooms.

The works were designed and conducted by an interdisciplinary team of the JRC starting from an in-depth technical-scientific study that investigated the structural peculiarities and materials of the different artifacts in the rooms, from the stucco relief decorations of the vaults, to the fixed and movable wooden furnishings, floors, stone, glass and metal artifacts, and paintings on canvas. In the small sitting room adjacent to the Alcove Room, the removal of recent tapestry unearthed a 19th-century fabric made of crimson-colored operated silk. The ancient tapestry will soon undergo conservation restoration.

As of 2019, the restorations have been funded by the Regional Secretariat for Piedmont under the current three-year agreement with the CCR. Thanks to the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation, which provided crucial support as early as 2021, work will also continue in 2022 in the other rooms on the main floor.

“For the Center, the restoration site of the rooms of Palazzo Chiablese was a fascinating and complex case study, which required a strong multidisciplinarity and collaboration among the different professional figures present at the Center for the different intervention cases, as well as being the activity that has most engaged the wooden furnishings laboratory with more than 4,000 hours of work for the Alcove room alone and the other two rooms that have returned from being offices to being usable as courtly rooms of the residence,” said Stefano Trucco, president of the Conservation and Restoration Center “La Venaria Reale.”

The apartment reopens to public visits thanks to the support of theFriends of the Royal Palace Turin ODV Association and, thanks to an agreement with the City of Turin, civil marriages can also be celebrated inside.

Photo by Silvano Pupella

Turin, Chiablese Duke's apartment reopens after lengthy restoration

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