Castagnevizza Monastery – The Bourbons
At Palazzo Coronini, from his bedroom Charles X could see, nestled on the Rafut hill, the nearby Franciscan monastery of Castegnevizza, founded in the 17th century by Matteo della Torre.
The sovereign had expressed a desire to visit it, but unfortunately he only reached it after his death, when the monastery church was chosen as his burial site. In the following decades, although the court had left Gorizia by mid-century, Castagnevizza continued to house the tombs of the exiled Bourbons. Initially, the remains were placed in the della Torre chapel, where the Dukes of Angoulême and Charles X's granddaughter, Louise-Marie, were also buried. In 1883, shortly before his death, the last descendant of the family, Henry V, Count of Chambord, had a new crypt built beneath the church's high altar to house his own tomb and that of his wife, Maria Teresa. The six sarcophagi, five marble and one metal, survived the war that had reduced the church above to rubble. In 1917, following the intervention of Empress Zita, a relative of the Bourbons, they were transferred to Austria. After the war, Italy requested their restitution, but it was not until 1932 that the Bourbons' remains were returned to Gorizia, to be re-interred in the church of Castegnevizza.






