The Palace of Venaria near Turin has made The Art Newspaper’s annual list of the 100 most visited cultural institutions in the world.
Italy features with six sites (plus the Vatican Museums of the Vatican State) in the list: besides the usual suspects, the Uffizi and the Accademia in Florence, and The Doge’s Palace in Venice, there are also Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, Pitti Palace in Florence and the Venaria Palace, which, along with Pitti, is the only place that has registered more visitors compared to the previous years, while numbers are down for the other institutions.
The Palace of Venaria (known in Italian as the Reggia di Venaria Reale) is a former royal residence located in Venaria Reale, near Turin, belonging to the Royal House of Savoy, and included in the UNESCO Heritage List in 1997.
The Palace was commissioned by duke Charles Emmanuel II, who needed a base for his hunting expeditions in the hill country north of Turin.
In 2013, 650,000 people visited the Venaria. This year, during the two weeks between Easter and May 1, as many as 88,000 tickets were sold.
Plan your visit to the Palace of Venaria here. But be careful when you visit: some people think it's haunted!
