Since 1997 the Royal Residences of Turin and Piedmont have been included in the World Heritage Sites List. The system originated in 1563 when the Duke of Savoy, Emanuele Filiberto, made Turin the capital of the duchy, launching a project of overall reorganization of the territory with the aim of celebrating the absolute power of the ruling house. Between the 17th and 18th centuries, his successors created the "Command Zone", where the centralized power was exercised in its political, administrative and cultural forms, found in the centre of the city, and a system of maisons de plaisance, and the "Corona di Delizie" (Crown of Delights), through the re-functionalization of existing residences and the construction of new buildings, intended for hunting and court loisirs (leisure) were created.
The unitary character of the complex is given by the sovereign desire which intervened through and on the architectural complexes to build the large metaphor of power and dynasty through the direct dominion of the places and by the stylistic homogeneity due to the group of architects and artists of the court working in a widespread manner in the residences and in the government buildings (among them also Filippo Juvarra, Benedetto Alfieri, Claudio Francesco Beaumont).
As well as the palaces included in the Baroque “Corona di Delizie” project, the complex also includes those residences acquired by the House of Savoy between the 18th and 19th centuries following a shift in the sovereigns’ interest towards peripheral territories important for their productive value or for private reasons.
Each one of them is distinguished by the peculiar characteristics that, together, provide an extraordinary fresco of the history of Piedmont and of Italy, with particular reference to the events that led - in the background of European history - to the formation of the unitary state: a unique, usable and accessible cultural, historical, architectural and environmental circuit of exceptional universal value and worthy of protection for the benefit of all humanity.
