Mole Antonelliana and National Museum of Cinema
Why is it significant?
Look up at the dizzying masonry spire of the Mole Antonelliana, the unmistakable silhouette towering over the rooftops of Turin as its most beloved civic icon.
Key Facts
| Place | Mole Antonelliana and National Museum of Cinema |
|---|---|
| Address | Via Montebello 20, 10124 Turin, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.06900, 7.69310 |
| Part of Walk | The Mole Antonelliana, the Murazzi and Gran Madre: Along the River Po to the Alpine Belvedere |
| Generated | Generated |
Look up at the dizzying masonry spire of the Mole Antonelliana, the unmistakable silhouette towering over the rooftops of Turin as its most beloved civic icon. Commissioned in 1863 from architect Alessandro Antonelli as a monumental synagogue for Turin's Jewish community following their emancipation under the 1848 Statuto Albertino, the structure grew relentlessly in scale until reaching the astonishing height of one hundred and sixty-seven and a half metres, standing for decades as the tallest unreinforced brick building in Europe. Alarmed by escalating costs and Antonelli's daring engineering experiments, the Jewish community transferred the unfinished shell to the City of Turin in 1877. The municipality completed the monument in 1889 as a memorial to King Vittorio Emanuele II. Today the vast interior hosts the National Museum of Cinema, one of the most imaginative film museums in the world, scenographically arranged by François Confino. The soaring verticality fills visitors with awe from the very first glance.
Ride the glass-walled panoramic elevator suspended in mid-air within the cavernous central temple hall: traveling without guide cables in just fifty-nine seconds, it ascends eighty-five metres to the outdoor viewing temple, revealing an extraordinary three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama of the snowcapped Alps ringing the Piedmontese plains.
In May 1953, a violent tornado sheared off the top forty-seven metres of the brick spire, sending it crashing into the gardens below without causing human casualties: the pinnacle was rebuilt in 1960 with a reinforced steel core clad in stone and topped by a twelve-pointed star.
Notice Antonelli's revolutionary brick ribbing: the architect employed ingenious static principles, combining wrought-iron tension rods and overlapping masonry arches to defy gravity with minimal wall thickness.
Walk south along Via Montebello and turn left onto Via Sant'Ottavio to reach the university campus of Palazzo Nuovo.