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Principessa Maria Teresa of Sardinia
(1803–79)

Other names: Maria Teresa Ferdinanda Felicita Gaetana Pia

Biographical

Born at Rome along with her twin sister, Maria Anna, Maria Teresa began her education at Cagliari where her family had fled to in 1806 after the French occupation of Piedmont. She became deeply religious and desired to become a nun. In 1815, she went to Genoa, where her father had gone to the year before, and in 1819 she was engaged to Carlo di Borbone-Parma. This union had been organised when she was a child, and the marriage took place in 1820. She had a marginal role at the court of Parma due to her authoritarian mother-in-law, and it was soon evident that she and her husband were not compatible. After the birth of her first child in 1821, Maria Teresa went to Rome and became a Dominican tertiary. By 1824 when her husband ascended the throne of Lucca, their relationship was strained, and he had become indifferent towards her. She embarked on travels with her husband in 1825 to Rome and Naples, and in 1826 she was struck down by a nervous breakdown. She eventfully settled at Vienna in the Kinsky Palace, as her husband continued his travels through Europe. In 1833, to escape a cholera epidemic, she went to Prague, but returned to Austria when she received the news that her husband had converted to Protestantism, causing her great suffering. Maria Teresa finally settled at the Villa Pianore, Lucca. She was present at the coronation of Ferdinand I of Austria at Milan in 1838, and in 1847 she moved to the Villa San Martino in Vignale, Lucca, but in September that year, she took refuge at Massa due to revolutionary uprisings, and then to Genoa where she was welcomed by Carlo Alberto of Savoy. Maria Teresa returned briefly to Parma as its duchess in 1848 when Carlo ascended the throne in December 1847, but was forced to leave due to the revolution, and she returned to Turin, staying there until August 1849. By December, she was back at Villa Pianore. She wrote her memoirs in 1855 and addressed them to the Dominican E. Milioni, her confessor. She moved permanently to the Villa San Martino, and spent her final years there.

Place of birth: Rome
Place of marriage: Lucca
Place of death: San Martino, near Lucca
Place of burial: Rome

Daughter of King Vittorio Amedeo I of Sardinia and Maria Therese of Austria-Este (Habsburg). She married Carlo II di Borbone, duke of Parma, in 1820, and had issue.

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