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Principessa Maria Anna of Sardinia
(1757–1824)

Other names: Other names: Maria Anna Carolina Gabriella

Biographical

After her husband/uncle, Benedetto, lost Chablais, Maria Anna followed him to Sardinia in 1799, and then Rome to Rome that year. They fled the advancing French forces in 1801 and took refuge at Caserta with the rest of the royal family until 1802 when they returned to Rome. After her husband's death in 1808, Maria Anna remained in Rome, even after the restoration of the Sardinian monarchy in 1817. She began a long campaign of excavations at her estate of Tor Marancia that lasted until 1823. She purchased part of the Villa Rufinella in Frascati from Lucien Bonaparte as her summer residence, and Isola Farnese from the Apostolic Camera. Her brothers insisted that she return to Piedmont, but she refused to do so, although she did visit briefly in 1818. In 1823, she decided to return to Piedmont In the summer of 1824 she accompanied the king on a trip to Savoy, and she died later that year. She bequeathed the greater part of her artefacts from Tor Maranciato the Vatican Museum.

Place of birth: Turin
Place of marriage: Turin
Place of death: Stupinigi
Place of burial: Stupinigi

Daughter of King Vittorio Amedeo III of Sardinia and Infanta María Antonieta of Spain (Borbón). She married her uncle, Prince Benedetto of Sardinia in 1775, and had no issue.

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