Rosa Vercellana

Rosa Vercellana, 1st Countess of Mirafiori and Fontanafredda (11 June 1833 – 26 December 1885), commonly known as 'Rosina' and, in Piedmontese, as La Bela Rosin, was the mistress and later wife of Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy.

She was born in Nice, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the youngest child of Giovanni Battista Vercellana and his wife, Maria Teresa Griglio.

[1] As the Savoy family refused to allow Vercellana to be buried next to her husband in the Pantheon, her children had a mausoleum built for her in a similar form (if on a smaller scale) in Turin, next to the road to the Castello di Mirafiori.

The circular, copper-domed, neoclassical monument, surmounted by a latin cross and surrounded by a large park, was designed by Angelo Dimezzi and completed in 1888.

The park was opened to the public two years later but almost immediately the mausoleum was broken into and the remains of Vercellana and her descendants were mutilated by people searching for jewels.

Vercellana's mausoleum in Turin.