Starting out in the 11th century as a military stronghold, Rivoli Castle is now home to the Museum of Contemporary Art which has a prestigious permanent collection and temporary major exhibitions in an original historical and architectural context. Owned by the Savoy since 1247, the castle was the first court of the Duchy of Savoy. In the 1600s it was transformed into a courtly residence by Carlo and Amedeo di Castellamonte.
The complex also gained the "Manica Lunga", the art gallery of dukes, more than 140 metres long. In the 1700s, Victor Amadeus II commissioned Juvarra to produce a grandiose rebuilding project, works that were never to be concluded. The incompletion of the construction, emphasised by the restoration by Andrea Bruno in the 1980s, has created an evocative line of continuity extending from the past, to the present and the future.

Since 1984, the Castello di Rivoli hosts Italy’s first Museum of Contemporary Art with masterpieces of Arte Povera, and since 2019 it runs the Cerruti Collection with masterpieces of art including works by Picasso, De Chirico, Kandinsky, Bacon and Warhol.