Sala delle Colonne

Madama Reale ordered further works to change the current Sala delle Colonne into a foyer between the two sides, its walls enriched with oval niches framed in stucco by Giovanni Luca Corbellino (1667), which hold eight busts of Roman emperors; outside the room are two other niches. Six precious Doric columns in “old Swiss” breccia marble, similar to those of the external portico, were centrally positioned in this same period to support the grand upper Salone. The role of this area became explicit: it was a transitional space between the monumental external flights of stairs connecting the river to the internal portico, from which the ceremonial route up to the noble apartments begins.