The Castello di Rivoli, with its peculiar structure that stands out on the hill of the morainic amphitheater of Rivoli-Avigliana is one of the most important symbols of the Savoy dynasty, an integral part of a design that from the end of the 16th century led to the creation of the so-called Crown of Delights, symbols and celebrations of absolute power. The complex consists of two structures: the Castle today in its eighteenth-century appearance and the opposite Manica Lunga, built in the 1600s, conceived as the Art Gallery of the Duke Carlo Emanuele I. The two buildings are separated by the atrium, an open split, on dominated by the unfinished walls of the Castle and the Manica Lunga. In the center, columns and pillars belonging to the grandiose Juvarra project that stand out towards the sky.
The atrium is the direct testimony of the state of the Juvarra construction site at the time of its interruption. Although the eighteenth-century views by Marco Ricci and Massimo Teodoro Michela show us how it should have been, the restoration by Andrea Bruno has deliberately avoided any completion. On the northern side of the Castle the sturdy Juvarra pillars dominate, while on the porphyry pavement, marble and stone slabs draw the positions of the uprights and the course of the spans, never built. The imposing wall of the Castle has the supports for the decorations not executed, the niches designed for the statues and the large buffered openings that evoke the halls imagined by the Messina architect. At the top stands the panoramic projection in steel and crystal, contemporary insertion. On the other side, the Manica Lunga, a Castellamontian building created to house the art gallery of Carlo Emanuele I, which according to the eighteenth-century projects, had to be demolished to give space to a wing as large as the existing one. The structure was at the center of the restoration campaign that started in 1986, as stated by the date set on the wall. Used as a barracks and then as accommodation for displaced families and not only, today the Manica Lunga has large windows opened by Andrea Bruno where there was the great gash left by the demolition interrupted by the Juvarra construction site.