“Life in Sardinia is perhaps the best that a man can hope for: twenty-four thousand kilometers of forests, of countryside, of coasts immersed in a miraculous sea should coincide with what I would advise the good God to give us as Paradise.” So wrote Fabrizio De André, who had made the island his adoptive home since 1975.
It is not known whether 220 years earlier Captain Vittorio Amedeo Costa, count of Carrù and Trinità and viceroy of Sardinia from the end of May 1755, felt the same way. Vittorio Amedeo was descended from a noble lineage of military commanders in the service of the Savoy: before leaving for Cagliari he had distinguished himself for several military campaigns including the reconquest of Asti and the liberation of Alessandria.
Although 30 years had now passed since the conquest by the Savoia, Sardinia was not exactly a paradise, so much so that the highest ranks of the army succeeded one another in the role of viceroy: in fact, the island was still militarized and the local population, accustomed to a feudal-type society plagued by piratical attacks, still looked with suspicion on the Savoia presence. Vittorio Amedeo was immediately entrusted by the government with the issue of population growth, to be addressed quickly through the creation of colonies such as that of Carloforte. The count was skeptical about the success of the colonization initiatives and instead suggested innovative measures that we would today call more sustainable, proposing to incentivize new marriages with a dowry for young couples. His proposal was not taken up immediately; it was not put into practice until the late 18th century, after his death. History, however, tells us that the problem of Sardinia’s low population growth depended mainly on the very high infant mortality, whereby almost one in two children did not survive, and the spread of malaria.
At the end of his term, the count returned to Turin and, perhaps inspired by the splendid Regio palace in Cagliari with its imposing grand staircase, commissioned the young architect Renato Birago of Borgaro, a pupil of Filippo Juvarra and future court architect, to design a new palace in the Borgo Nuovo district. The Palazzo Costa di Carrù della Trinità – facing Via San Francesco da Paola and adjacent to the Crocifisso block, owned by the nuns and which we know today as Piazzale Valdo Fusi-immediately stood out for its significant size and remains to this day one of the city’s largest aristocratic complexes. Stepping through the main entrance portal, on the left stands the monumental marble staircase, decorated with trompe-l’oeil in the classicist style and topped by a splendid pavilion ceiling, decorated with geometrically textured stucco. On the piano nobile is the marvelous hall of honor and the master bedrooms, floored with historic parquet floors and adorned with rich decorations on the vaults, in the impost frames and on the door and window openings, of sober neoclassical taste alternating with the fantasy of Rococo. Peeking through the front door, at the end of the rectangular courtyard, a sculpture depicting Hercules fighting with the Nemean lion stands out.
During the nearly 100 Allied bombing raids that hit the city of Turin during World War II, not even the Costa Palace in Carrù was spared: most of the vaults of the palace’s rooms were damaged and presumably the bombs swept away many decorations and imposing chimneys of which traces were found in the reconstruction of the floors.
Those who today find themselves walking through the streets of Borgo Nuovo, the area of downtown Turin bounded by Via Roma, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Via Po and Corso Cairoli, might wonder why a neighborhood so rich in historic buildings is called “new,” since, in all likelihood, it was already no longer “new” when it was inaugurated in 1763. The name Borgo Nuovo dates back to 1620 when Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy first enlarged the city southward by building precisely the “via Nuova”-then renamed via Roma after the Unification of Italy and later completely rebuilt during the Fascist twenty-year period by regime architect Marcello Piacentini.
During the 1943 bombing of the Crocefisso block, the seventeenth-century Palazzo Morozzo della Rocca, seat of the Chamber of Commerce since 1871, was demolished. In contrast, the San Sebastiano block, with the Costa Carrù Palace of the Trinity and the 18th-century College of the Provinces, and the San Vittore block, with houses from the last decades of the 19th century and the Hospital of St. John the Baptist (now the Museum of Natural Sciences), designed in 1680 by Castellamonte, suffered less damage and were rebuilt.
In the years following its construction, the Palazzo Costa di Carrù della Trinità expanded, annexing the so-called “delle Cascine” complex, the result of purchases of income houses that overlooked present-day Via Giolitti and Via Accademia Albertina. Over time, this part of the complex would become a real social welfare hub of a philanthropic nature: in 1837 the Cascine property was home to the Ricovero delle figlie della Misericordia (Shelter of the Daughters of Mercy) for the care of young girls in distress, founded by Luigia Alfieri in connection with the Dame della Carità di San Vincenzo. In the following years, the “Carrù Retreat” was founded by Countess Costanza Luserna of Rorà, later merged into a single institute called the “Alfieri Retreat,” which functioned as an educandato for Catholic maidens of less than affluent social status. During the years of World War II, the building housed other institutions, such as the Providence Educatory and a hospital of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta equipped with a surgical and pediatric medical clinic.
Today, the main floor of Palazzo Costa di Carrù della Trinità houses Ultraspazio Club, a co-working and event space whose rooms, including the splendid hall of honor, are equipped with sensors and a digital platform to calculate and monitor the environmental and social impact of the community in using the palace’s environments. Sensors through collected data generate the awareness that underlies any good sustainability project: who knows what old Count Vittorio Amedeo, who had this splendid palace built and was already pursuing more sustainable choices in the second half of the 1700s, would think of this, but do you want to put the privilege of being able to work immersed in beauty?
