The History
Used as a hunting residence of the Savoy monarchy for just under a century, it was abandoned at the end of the 18th century and then converted into a barracks, where for the entire nineteenth century and part of the twentieth century it housed the artillery regiments which played a leading role in the Italian Risorgimento independence wars. He later fell into a long period of oblivion and decadence. Suffice to say that during the construction boom of the 1960s the structural conditions of the area were such that there was even the risk of losing it forever: an outrageous proposal involved destruction by dynamite to make room for anonymous popular flats. Fortunately, the politicians of the time did not embark on the road of demolition and, in fact, they forgot about the ancient city symbol for about twenty years.
Eight years of careful restoration and the Royal Palace has literally risen from ashes.
The Royal Palace re-emerges with the imposing Diana Gallery, the chapel of S. Uberto, the court of honor with the suggestive Fountain of The Deer and the 80 hectares of gardens, partly recovered off of the original drawing and partly reinterpreted in a contemporary key.
The “Garden of Fluid Sculptures” by the Cuneo artist Giuseppe Penone is the most clear example.
This brings us to 2011, an important year for Italy and Piedmont, because we celebrate the 150th anniversary of national unity.
The Royal Palace has now become a must for tourist voyages and wants to give the numerous visitors a new point of attraction, important for the historical landscape of the area: the Potager Royal. Vegetable gardens, orchards, fragrant beds of aromatic herbs take their place inside the monumental complex, flanked by long tree-lined avenues framed by the pointed profile of the Alps. The Potager Royal originally composed (XVI and XVII centuries), in the aristocratic residences, areas from the refined geometries, conceived for the loisir of kings, princes and marquises. They also constituted a natural pantry to use for most of the year to complete the banquets with vegetables and fresh fruit, an authentic privilege of the noble class. The times of golden courts are a distant memory, today the new courts are the visitors, as the project of the modern Potager Royal was conceived thinking of today’s “inhabitants” of the Royal Palace. There are many examples of “royal gardens” in Europe, from Versailles to the Castles of the Loire, to the summer residences of the Austrian and British courts. The Venaria Potager is inspired by various significant aspects to some of these. At Versailles as regards the functions and part of the design objectives, while the geometric designs and the scenographic effects that plants and flower beds make, follow those of the late sixteenth-century jewel of Villandry. Courgettes, aubergines, strawberries, tomatoes and decorative plants make up colorful squares that fit into the precise checkerboard pattern that distinguishes the gardens of the Royal Palace. The garden has been designed with an alternation of lawn areas, vegetables and extensive crops, with water features and covered spaces, able to make visitors experience the charm of this space. The orchard, bordered by trails, presents a fruit collection characterized by a selection of the main Piedmontese species. The general philosophy of the project involves the use of native drupaceous cultivars (peach, plum, apricot, cherry) and pomaceous (pear, apple tree). On the edge of the La Mandria Park there is also a hazel grove. In ancient times, hazelnut plants were cultivated in Piedmont, fruits rich in virtue for their noble nutritional properties, including fiber, vitamins and minerals. Gardens and orchards, it should be remembered, develop in a sort of perfect symmetry around the heart of the intervention, the nineteenth-century Cascina that belonged to the Vascello family of doctors. Once the site of a lively farm, today, after a demanding recovery, used as an environmental education center (it has, in fact, two teaching classrooms and a conference room), as well as a starting point for educational explorations among the colorful vegetables and the many varieties of fruit trees. It turns out that the Potager Royal of Venaria must not only satisfy aesthetic purposes, limiting itself to a pleasant space to be admired passively at a safe distance. On the contrary, it must be experienced with the active participation of all users.
The vegetable garden and the orchard were made according to the principles of agroecology, a unique model of its kind, with recreational, aesthetic, educational, historical and gastronomic purposes. A space to learn, feeling at one with nature through the use of sight, smell, taste and above all the hands with which to touch, manipulate and if necessary get dirty with the ground.
The inaugural moment was not a simple celebratory toast but it coincided with the experimentation of original didactic paths aimed at children, students and adults. From April to nowadays, around 300 school classes from all over Italy have participated in the educational workshops. A new way of spreading culture, actively participating, because as an old sage said: “If I listen, I forget, if I do I learn”. Participation, rediscovery of the use of the senses, observation and manipulation, are keywords of modern environmental education, but which often remain principles on paper due to the absence of adequate spaces where to apply them.
The Potager Royal of Venaria offers such possibility. Certainly it is a young project, yet to be put precisely in some organizational aspects, yet with plans to enrich itself over time with new educational structures.
The insertion of an apiary, dedicated to the discovery of the world of bees, is expected shortly. To understand how they are made, how complex their social organization is, but above all to underline the fundamental role they play in agriculture and for the survival of the Earth.
Other interventions should concern the activation of a seedbed, a composting area and a small section dedicated to ancient agricultural tools. In this way, we intend to reconstruct the entire agricultural path making it known to the essential aspects for children and adults.
Urbanization in recent decades has pushed most of the population away from the Earth, meant both as work of such and as knowledge of nature and the mechanisms that regulate it. A detachment perceived by more and more people who feel the need to recover at least partially auch bond essential to the psycho-physical well-being of each individual. The Royal Palace of Venaria with the new Potager offers this opportunity.
The Delights from the Potager Royal (Delizie del Potager Royal) are products made using the fruits and vegetables grown in the orchards and vegetable gardens of the Gardens of Venaria. They are on sale at the Caffé degli Argenti café.
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