Tesoriera is an urban park in the West part of Turin. It is an enclosed green area designed around Villa Sartirara, a baroque style villa built between 1713 and 1715.
The Villa took the name Villa Tesoriera (Villa Treasurer) because is was built for a powerful councilor and treasury officer of the Savoy State called Ajmo Ferrero di Cocconato.
The original Villa was modified and enlarged during the 1800s and the 1900s. Today it is owned by the Turin Municipality and hosts the Musical Civic Library “Andrea Della Corte”.
The surrounding 75000-squared-meter gardens were part of the Villa’s property and survived the huge urban development of the last century. The park represents a green lung in this part of the city and is very neat and pleasant, with alleys, trees, hedges, flowers, and fountains.
The park also hosts the biggest and oldest tree of Turin, a plane tree with a trunk 7m circumference that has got the nickname “grandpa” (read more here – in Italian).
Legend has it that the ghost of the treasurer officer Ajmo Ferrero di Cocconato sometimes loves to come back and live in the Villa for a while. Because of this legend, Tesoriera Park had been nicknamed “Ël giardin dël diav”, which in the Piedmont dialect means “The garden of the devil”.
