[ Apr.2019 ] The last thing we visited on the day was the Palace of Venaria itself, which is in Piedmont in the north of Italy.
The last possible time people could get in was 5:30pm and once you get in, you could look around inside until 6:30pm.
First, in a large room near the entrance, there were many portraits of the Savoy family displayed in a stylish manner, which had the ‘wow’ factor.
This room is called the ‘Portrait Gallery’ and showing the history of the Savoy family, which lasted for more than 1,000 years.
The room itself is located on the underground floor and it used to be the servant area.
After this strong impact, however, the next rooms were more like exhibitions in a museum rather than a palace.
When we went upstairs, the rooms were more palatial; for example, in a large hall there were many paintings which belonged to the Savoy people.
Some of the paintings of the ceilings and walls were restored very well, but there were some parts painted over.
I suppose they could not work out the original pictures.
Also, large parts of the walls were covered by curtains and I wondered if the wall had been badly damaged.
There was a lovely but rather small ballroom with a beautiful chandelier.
There was also a charming cembalo.
But the main attraction of this palace was the long, black and white room called the ‘Great Gallery’.
It is so beautiful that I can say that it is worth visiting the Palace just to see this room.
This room is located just above the ‘Portrait Gallery’ I mentioned earlier and apparently, it is 80 metres long.
It is a masterpiece of the renowned architect in the early 18th century, Filippo Juvarra.
The 44 tall windows and the round windows on top of them allow the natural light to come in, so it is very bright.
According to a booklet we bought later, the famous British musician, Brian Eno, had composed music for this room and you are supposed to be able to hear it when you are here, but when we were there, we did not hear anything, unfortunately.
Not only Eno, but some other contemporary artists were featured in this Palace.
There were some rooms where we could see videos showing life in the past and those videos were created by Peter Greenaway, the British film director who made the famous film ‘The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover’.
That is one of the films which I cannot forget.
Also, there were costumed dolls made of paper made by the Belgian artist, Isabelle de Borchgrave, which were lovely.
We visited the Church of St. Hubert at the end.
By the way, the impressive ‘Great Gallery’ design was used for the souvenirs and I bought an eyeglass cloth of this picture.
