POLO REALE, Royal Armory

As you can imagine, tradition dictated that royal families collected arms as a way to emphasize their strength and power. But for the Savoys who were brave warriors and expert hunters, weapons were a passion. For this reason, together with the Armory of Madrid and the Imperial Armory of Vienna, the Royal Armory in Turin is one of the richest in the world.

The Armory was inaugurated in 1837 by Charles Albert shortly after the creation of the Sabauda Gallery; it began with a nucleus of weapons from the Museum of Antiquities and the arsenals of Turin and Genoa. It was then enlarged with new purchases that came from both personal collections of the kings of Italy and acquisitions and donations.

The Armory is currently an integral part of the Polo Reale and is located in the gallery that connects the Royal Palace with the State Secretariats, where a Prefecture is today located. Its atmosphere is fascinating. After you go up the eighteenth-century staircase, you'll enter a room that was once the court theater and was then transformed into the Rotunda Hall in the 1800s. From here you can walk to the beautiful Beaumont Gallery, a vast eighteenth-century hall designed by the great architect Filippo Juvarra (the same as the Scala della Forbice) and decorated with colorful and lively scenes connected to the legendary figure of Aeneas....