The Barolo palace (also Palazzo Falletti di Barolo) is a patrician residence in Turin. It
is home to the Barolo Opera which, according to the will of the
Marchesa Giulia, has the task of continuing the activities of promoting human
and social service that Giulia and her husband Tancredi had
started.
The
building, which stands in Via delle Orfane, was built at the end of the
seventeenth century by Gian Francesco Baroncelli as a renovation of the
house already owned by Count Ottavio Provana di Druento, "first squire"
and "great guardarobiere" of Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy .
In
the palace lived the only daughter of Count Ottavio, Elena Matilde,
with her husband, Marquis Gabriele Falletti di Barolo who, with three
children born in the marriage, left the palace and his wife when the
father-in-law did not give his daughter the rich dowry already promised at the time of marriage.At age 26, Elena Matilde committed suicide by throwing herself out of her bedroom window.
In
1727 it was inherited by Ottavio Giuseppe, the eldest son of Elena and
Gabriele Falletti di Barolo, who entrusted the modification to Benedetto
Alfieri around the middle of the eighteenth century to adapt it to the
rococo style. The
palace was the residence of the Falletti family up to the married
couple Tancredi (who died in 1838) and Giulia di Barolo (who died in
1864), with whom the family died out. They left the palace at the Opera Pia Barolo foundation.
Filippo Juvarra (March 7, 1678 – January 31, 1736) was an Italian architect and stage set designer, active in a late-Baroque style.
One of his masterworks in palace construction is the façade (1718–21) of the Palazzo Madama in central Turin. It recalls the formality of Andrea Palladio Palladio’s Palazzo Chiericati but with the enhancement of detail and windows. While the facade appears to house an airy piano nobile,
it in fact is merely a scenic, almost theatrical gesture, sheltering a
grandiose entry stairway entrance to a medieval castle. But this work
was also part of an ambitious program to recast the crowded, medieval
layout of central Turin into a more open and planned set of connected
plazas.
The symbolic Juvarra stairs ( Scala Delle Forbici ) at palazzo Madama were once opened to public free entrance to get up to upper floor's hall, from there it provides a nice view of piazza Castello looking toward the busy via Garibaldi. Since the 31st of March 2016, it was decided only ticket holders are allowed to enter, the reason given was for security....Yet on every first Wednesday of the month, public is granted free entry and the security seems isn't an issue anymore.
Two men having a conversation under the arcade along via Viotti.....
