Palazzo Madama, Turin

Façade of Palazzo Madama, Turin.

The rear area, still bearing the appearance of a castle.

Palazzo Madama e Casaforte degli Acaja is a palace in Turin, northern Italy.

History

At the beginning of the 1st century BC, the site of the palace was occupied by a gate in the Roman walls from which the decumanus maximus of Augusta Taurinorum (the ancient name of Turin) departed. Two of the towers, although restored, testify this original nucleus. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the gate was used as a fortified stronghold at defence of the city.

Later the building became a possession of the Savoia-Acaja, a secondary branch of the House of Savoy, who, in the early-14th century, enlarged it into a castle. A century later Ludovico of Acaja rebuilt in square shape, with an inner court and a portico, and four cylindrical towers at each angle. The form of this edifice is still clearly recognizable from the back section of the palace. After the extinction of the Acajas, the edifice became a residence for guests of the titular Savoy.

In 1637 the regent for Duke Charles II Emmanuel, Christine Marie of France, elected it as her personal residence. She commissioned the covering of the court and a revamping of the inner apartments. Sixty years later another regent, Marie Jeanne Baptiste de Savoie-Nemours, lived in the palace, conferring it definitively the nickname of Madama (Italian for Madame). She asked architect Filippo Juvarra to design a new Baroque palace in white stone, but the works halted in 1721 after only the front section had been completed.

Later the palace had various uses, and housed the headquarters of the provisional French government during the Napoleonic Wars. In the 19th century King Charles Albert elected it as seat of the Pinacoteca Regia, and, later, of the Subalpine Senate (the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia) and of the High Court. From 1934 it is home to the Town Museum of Ancient Art.

The section built by Juvarra constitutes today a scenographic façade for the rear part of the edifice, which had remained unchanged. It has a lower floor in ashlarwork, surmounted by a high section with large windows divided by columns and pilasters in composite order. Thh upper part has a cordonata decorated with vases and statues in white marble.

City museum of Ancient Art

The Palazzo Madama houses the Turin City Museum of Ancient Art. The museum has a rare collection of artifacts from Gandhara, coming from the Italian excavations of the IsMEO at the Butkara Stupa in Pakistan. In winter 2007, it openned an exhibitions entitled "On the traces of Alexander, from Seleucia to Gandhara".

See also

• City Museum of Ancient Art in Palazzo Madama

45°04′15″N 7°41′09″E