Routes to the Royal Palace of Venaria Reale (TO): research for the valorization of the urban context

Walking through the village of Venaria Reale, we observe how the restoration of the palace, started at the end of the last century and ended in 2007, has determined a complex reality on the urban level in which the monumental asset shows difficulties in relation to a fabric historically connected to this in an inseparable way. More than ten years after the inauguration, the relationship between the palace and the old town has not yet completely reassembled: the main axis of via Mensa has benefited from extraordinary measures for the redevelopment to the detriment of the rest of the fabric that today is scarcely permeable and compromised by phenomena of material and anthropic degradation. From this premise comes the idea to analyze an urban axis that crosses via Mensa (via XX Settembre - via Cesare Battisti) historically documented since the foundation of the village and with a privileged role in relation to the connection routes to the palace. The proposed essay aims to present the results of a research carried out within the School of Specialization in Architectural Heritage and Landscape of the Turin Polytechnic with the aim of providing valorization actions able to balance the interventions along a single road axis that does not ensure an adequate urban relapse. The desired operation could have a cultural value of recovering the usability of the historical nucleus by defining a much more permeable urban fabric.