Palazzo Cisterna

The marquis Antonio Ripa del Gaglione and the prince Giacomo dal Pozzo della Cisterna made an agreement in 1685 for the exchange of the palaces they owned, both ascribed to the engineer Maurizio Valperga.

View of the back entrance of the palazzo Cisterna

The palace placed in via Maria Vittoria, passed to the Dal Pozzo, was then enlarged adding in 1691 the sleeve towards via Carlo Alberto.
The garden was initially given to Henri Duparc, later Superintendent of the gardens of the Castello di Venaria Reale.

But between 1773 and 1787 the palace gains its actual shape, in the canons of an elegant classicism, under the direction of the architect Valeriano Dellala of Beinasco.

The project for the façade, scanned by Corinthian pilasters thickening towards the centre and of angular prominences, is dated 1780. Also the interior part was re-modernised with the help of the most important artists: the painters Antoniani and Cignaroli, the wood sculptors Gianotti and Bonzanigo, the marble sculptors Bernero and Ferrero, the stucco-worker Bolina, everyone active in lots of building yards among noble palaces and court palaces.

In 1867 the last heiress of the Dal Pozzo married Amedeo of Savoy, son of Vittorio Emanuele II, and the palace then became residence of the Dukes of Aosta, that promoted the finishing of the palace, the reconstruction of the staircase and the railing along the garden.

Since 1940 the building, whose rooms testify the neo-renaissance and neo-baroque taste of the second half of the 19th century, is seat of the Turin Province.