The Real Collegio Carlo Alberto, founded by the King himself in 1838, was an exclusive educational institution for the scions of the Piedmontese aristocracy and upper middle class, the future ruling class of the Kingdom of Savoy.
Built a few kilometres from Turin on the ruins of a 13th-century convent, it has always been run by the Barnabite Fathers, who turned it into an important centre of learning and a meeting place for renowned scientists, entrepreneurs and intellectuals.
Among its illustrious students were Felice Cordero di Pamparato, the famous partisan better known as ‘Campana’, several members of the Lavazza and Ferrero families, and the textile industrialist Carlo Rivetti.
Thanks to a number of scheduled guided tours, it is possible to enter the most evocative rooms of the complex and walk through settings reminiscent of ‘Harry Potter’-style sagas .
The tour winds through the spacious atrium with its marble floor bearing the royal coat of arms quartered with that of the Barnabites, the Red Room, the Yellow Room, the chapel dating from the 1930s which replaced the previous Gothic-style chapel (converted into the current Yellow Room), the monumental staircase and the spacious second-floor gallery housing the ornithological and ethnographic collections.