[1] At the beginning of the first century BC, the site of the palace was occupied by a gate in the Roman walls from which the decumanus maximus of Augusta Taurinorum (the ancient name of Turin) departed.
[3] The duchess also asked architect Filippo Juvarra to design a new Baroque palace in white stone, which he did in 1716, but the works halted in 1721 after only the front section had been completed.
In the 19th century King Charles Albert selected it as seat of the Pinacoteca Regia, the royal art gallery, and, later, of the Subalpine Senate (the Parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia) and of the High Court.
On the exterior, Juvarra expressed what was intended as a magnificent architectural preamble to an edifice that was never built, as a high-ceilinged piano nobile with arch-headed windows, which is linked to a mezzanine above it by a colossal row of pilasters of the composite order.
On 25th January 2022, the semi-final allocation draw and host city handover for the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 was set and took place at the palace.
Despite its name, it is a large collection of paintings, statues, church ornaments, porcelain, and decorative art, mostly from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century.