Palazzo Grosso e il suo giardino da villa aristocratica a sede comunale/ Grosso Palace and Garden from country villa to town hall

In 1796-1797 countess Faustina Mazzetti required architect Leopold Pollack for English landscape garden projects. It was the final intervention by a brilliant patron who totally transformed her country villa of Riva presso Chieri, in the nearby of Turin, into a fashionable Neoclassical building. After 50 years the property was sold to Municipality. Preserved the palace, used to house municipality different offices and services and also as primary school, the landscape garden was sold to different private owners and converted to agricultural use. Since 1970s the Municipality promoted different restoration campaigns to recover the most remarkable halls and rooms of the first floor and of the second one. The former ones have been reconverted as spaces for congress, concerts and temporary exhibitions and the latter ones as permanent site of the Paesaggio Sonoro Museum. The possibilities to replace, at least with virtual technology, the original and lost English garden is still an open problem and it can be considered the final step for the complete property recover to the XVIIITH century aspect finalized to the public opening and to the use of the building as a cultural centre.