The contemporary art museum in the Savoy castle
On a hill at the entrance to the Val di Susa, about 15 kilometres west of Turin, the Castello di Rivoli is one of the Savoy Residences of the UNESCO site and an extraordinary example of the dialogue between past and present. The Savoy castle, of medieval origin, was rebuilt in the eighteenth century by Filippo Juvarra for King Victor Amadeus II as a grandiose royal palace, but the works were interrupted and the palace was never completed; for over two centuries it remained unfinished and fell into decline.
Restored in the 1980s by the architect Andrea Bruno, who left the unfinished parts visible and inserted modern elements in steel and glass, it has housed since 1984 the Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, the first museum of contemporary art in Italy and one of the most important in Europe. The collection includes works of Arte Povera, the Italian movement born in Turin in the 1960s, by artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone and Jannis Kounellis, as well as international artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, whose stuffed horses hang from the ceiling, Sol LeWitt and Marina Abramović. The museum also includes the Collezione Cerruti, a private collection of masterpieces from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century in a nearby villa. The view from the terrace sweeps over Turin and the Alps.
Tip: check the programme of temporary exhibitions; the Manica Lunga, an unfinished gallery 140 metres long, is a spectacular exhibition space.
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