The vast gardens of a Savoy hunting lodge which was the model for Louis XIV's magnificent residence at Versailles are to open to the public next week after an eight-year restoration.
Thanks to 200 architects and botanists, the 80-hectares of graceful, geometrically laid-out gardens surrounding the Reggia di Venaria Reale have re-emerged after over 50 years of neglect.
Around 40,000 new shrubs and trees were planted as paths were cleared and flowerbeds freed of undergrowth. Restorers have even dug up and replenished a 250-metre long fish pond which had long since dried up and disappeared.
The grandiose Baroque summer residence and hunting lodge was built outside Turin by Savoy ruler Carlo Emmanuele II in the mid-17th century.
The Venaria estate is often called the Italian Versailles because French king Louis XIV copied it when he built his own country residence outside Paris.
Architect Amedeo di Castellamonte designed the complex, centered around the Reggia. In the grounds there was a little village to house members of the court and stables for 200 horses and 200 hounds.
The opening of the gardens on June 10 will mark the completion of an important part of the 200-million-euro project to restore the entire complex.
Parts of the Reggia which have already been restored have been turned into a museum and will open to the public in the autumn.
"This is the biggest restoration project under way in Europe," said Piedmont regional government chief Mercedes Bresso at a presentation ceremony on Friday. "We are saving part of humanity's heritage".
In fact UNESCO has declared Venaria part of humanity's cultural heritage. Its full restoration is expected to be finished by 2011, in time for the 150th anniversary of Italian unity.
LEMON GROVE AND BAROQUE CHAPEL.
Completed in 1663, the Reggia was destroyed in 1693 by French troops who invaded the Savoy kingdom. It was rebuilt in 1708, with a citrus grove and a church considered one of the masterpieces of the Italian Baroque, the chapel of Sant'Uberto.
The Savoys used the lodge for almost a century, until the arrival of Napoleon's troops in 1797. The estate was allowed to deteriorate after that point, serving the Savoy family as a stable, and later used by Hitler's officers as a barracks.
In the 1960s the Reggia and the stables provided unofficial homes for hundreds of poor immigrant workers from southern Italy.
Italian media have commented on how the project to restore Venaria has prompted an unusual display of cooperation between politicians, local administrators and cultural authorities.
"It's been decades since we've seen a choral effort of this magnitude, involving a combination of intelligence, money, culture, technical ability and bureaucratic agility," Corriere della Sera enthused.
