Racconigi

Racconigi sits on the Po plain, 35 kilometres south of Torino. The town passed in turn through the hands of the marquises of Saluzzo, the princes of Acaia and the Savoia-Carignano, and it was this last line that shaped what stands today. Duke Carlo Emanuele I granted the estate in 1630 to his nephew Tommaso Francesco, founder of the Carignano branch, and the fortress that resulted was later opened out into a country residence set within its own designed landscape rather than confined behind walls.

The park was remade twice, first on French lines in 1755, then reworked eighty years later by a German landscaper into the lakes, canals and follies that surround the building now. The centre for stork reintroduction occupies a farmhouse next to this park, so the estate and the breeding site share ground rather than sitting apart in different parts of town. The old centre, between the castle and the station, is where the smaller scale of daily Racconigi meets the scale of the estate that gives the town its name recognition. What holds these pieces together is that Racconigi's identity was built from the outside in: a noble residence and its grounds first, a town organised around servicing and adjoining it second.