The royal castle of Racconigi, in the province of Cuneo and not far from Turin, was founded around the 11th century as a stronghold in the Marca di Torino. The Racconigi castle passed to the Marquises of Saluzzo and then to the Savoy and with the accession to the throne of Carlo Alberto, prince of Carignano, the residence took on its present aspect. In 1820 the German gardener Xavier Kurten redesigned the green spaces, while the decoration and rearrangement of the interiors were entrusted to the architect Pelagio Palagi, whose taste between neoclassical and eclectic is well represented by an environment of singular charm such as the Etruscan Cabinet. On the edge of the park, the neo-Gothic style service buildings of the Serre and Margaria were built, intended for the agricultural management of the territory pertaining to the castle. The sumptuous apartments are evidence of the most significant phases of transformation that the castle underwent from the seventeenth century to the beginning of the twentieth: stuccos, frescoes and furnishings constitute a significant panorama of the changing taste of the court over the course of about four hundred years. The gardens and the park keep the nineteenth-century structure intact, characterized by a romantic matrix layout with waterways, ponds, caves and monuments.