Piedmont: five UNESCO sites, 22 Savoy residences

Piedmont has 5 World Heritage sites in 2026, and the two largest are networks rather than single places: 22 Savoy palaces and villas in and around Turin, and a wine landscape made of five areas and a castle.

Five sites, two of them shared

Piedmont's five were listed over 21 years: the Savoy residences in 1997, the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy in 2003, the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps in 2011, the vineyard landscapes of Langhe-Roero and Monferrato in 2014, and Ivrea, industrial city of the twentieth century, in 2018.

Two are shared. The Sacri Monti belong to Piedmont and Lombardy, and the pile dwellings to five regions: Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Lombardy, Piedmont, Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto. Each shared site is counted once in every region it touches.

The Savoy residences: 11 in Turin, 11 outside it

The Savoy residences were listed in 1997 under four criteria, i, ii, iv and v, and they are 22 palaces and villas: eleven in the centre of Turin and eleven in the surrounding territory. Venaria, Rivoli, Moncalieri, Racconigi, Govone, Agliè and Pollenzo are among them.

The core zone measures 370.82³ hectares and the buffer zone 6,931.47³. The architects behind them include Filippo Juvarra, Guarino Guarini and Benedetto Alfieri.

Venaria is the one most visitors choose. In 2026 the Reggia costs €18, the gardens alone €6 and the Castello della Mandria €10; under 21s and university students under 26 pay €8, €2 and €3, groups €15, and children under 6 go in free. The gardens are included in every Reggia ticket.

Langhe-Roero and Monferrato: a buffer seven times the core

The vineyard landscapes of Langhe-Roero and Monferrato were listed in 2014 under criteria iii and v, as a serial site of five wine areas plus one castle. The core zone is 10,789⁵ hectares and the buffer zone 76,249⁵.

That ratio is the key to reading the site. It protects a landscape that is still farmed, so the listed thing is the pattern of vines, villages and cellars, not a building you can close at night.

The site is twinned with the rice terraces of the Hani in Yunnan, China, another landscape listed for the way people work it.

Seven Sacri Monti, built instead of a pilgrimage

Seven of the nine Sacri Monti listed in 2003 stand in Piedmont: Varallo, Crea, Orta, Oropa, Ghiffa, Domodossola and Valperga at Belmonte. They were built between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as an alternative to the pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

The remaining two, Ossuccio and Varese, are in Lombardy, which is why the same listing appears on both regions' pages. The core and buffer figures for the whole serial site are on the Lombardy page.

Ivrea, and what the count leaves out

Ivrea entered the list in 2018 as an industrial city of the twentieth century, the newest of Piedmont's five. The ledger this site uses holds its year and name, not its perimeter or visiting arrangements, so neither is given here.

The pile dwellings are the other quiet entry: counted in Piedmont, but shared across five regions, with no Piedmontese component named in the sources we hold.

More in Piedmont, the Reggia di Venaria, the Sacri Monti, food in Piedmont, Lombardy's list and Turin.

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