Rivoli Castle

About

Castello di Rivoli began as a fortress first built around the 9th or 10th century, occupied by the House of Savoy as a strategic stronghold by the late 12th century. Around 1245, Amadeus IV built a proper fortified structure, and after the 1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis restricted his residence in Turin, Emmanuel Philibert I made the castle his temporary residence. In 1718 architect Filippo Juvarra took on an ambitious Baroque reconstruction project, which was ultimately never completed. The castle opened as a museum of contemporary art in 1984, establishing what is considered Italy's first museum model dedicated to contemporary art. In 2019, the adjacent Villa Cerruti opened nearby, showing roughly 300 paintings and sculptures spanning the medieval period to the present.