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Seventeen kilometres north of Turin, Venaria Reale exists in a peculiar relationship with its own scale. The town itself is modest, a quiet Piedmontese settlement of around 35,000 people, yet at its edge stands one of the largest royal residences in Europe, a palace complex so vast that it spent decades in near-ruin before an extraordinary restoration effort returned it to something approaching its original ambition. That contrast, between the everyday rhythms of a small Italian comune and the sheer theatrical excess of a Savoy hunting retreat, is what gives Venaria Reale its particular character.

The Reggia di Venaria Reale was conceived in the mid-seventeenth century by Carlo Emanuele II of Savoy and expanded over the following century into a composition of state apartments, formal gardens, stables, and chapels that UNESCO recognised as a World Heritage Site in 1997, grouping it with the other Savoy residences scattered across Piedmont and Liguria. The restoration, completed in the early 2000s, was one of the most ambitious conservation projects in Italian postwar history. Walking through the Galleria di Diana, with its barrel-vaulted ceiling and the hunting trophies that gave the palace its name, it becomes clear why the project demanded such effort and such patience.