Skyscraper

The city of Turin – Torino, in Italian – has a particularly rich variety of architectural treasure. There is, for example, a huge building with an automobile test track on the roof:  it’s the old Fiat factory, the Lingotto, a symbol of Torino’s industrial might since 1923, retired now from manufacturing and serving as a shopping mall.  Then there are the splendid columned porticos of the great square in the centre of town, Piazza San Carlo, thronged with Torinese even on the city’s bitterly cold winter evenings.  Piazza Castello is surrounded by royal palaces and churches of the Savoy dynasty, which ruled here for centuries.  The Savoy built pleasure palaces and hunting lodges on the outskirts, too.  And on a hill overlooking Torino, there is the graceful baroque Basilica di Superga, built in gratitude to the Virgin Mary for an 18th century victory over the French. But the most unmistakeable architectural symbol of Torino is the Mole Antonelliana, towering over the busy downtown streets rather like a masonry missile poised for takeoff.

The Mole in Torino is the tallest unreinforced brick building in the world.  It will likely remain so as long as it stands, because the Mole’s history suggests that the structure’s 167.5 metres (550 feet) is probably about as high as an unreinforced brick building should ever be:  begun in 1863, it was still uncompleted in 1887 when an earthquake caused the tambour (the drum supporting the dome and spire), to deform.  This was repaired, but in 1904, a storm blew the 5.46 metre (18 foot) gilded copper statue of a winged genie off the top of the spire, where, luckily, it dangled high above the city until it could be removed and replaced by a copper star.  Then, in 1953, a tornado destroyed the top 47 metres (154 feet) of the spire.  This too, was repaired.  (You’ve got to give the Torinese high marks for persistence.)

Persistence was a prominent characteristic of Alessandro Antonelli, the building’s designer, as was his belief that architectural plans are merely seeds from which buildings grow.  His original commission, in 1862, was from the Jewish University in Torino, whose directors wished to build a grand new synagogue to commemorate King Charles Albert’s 1848 decree granting equal rights to the Jewish people. But as the years passed, Antonelli repeatedly altered the plans during construction.  The building grew ever taller, and the costs grew with it, until in 1869 the directors of the University announced that they were abandoning the project.  Somehow, Antonelli persuaded the city to buy the building, finance its completion, and declare it a national monument to Victor Emmanuel II.

Alessandro Antonelli died in 1888, with the building still incomplete:  though the spire was at the 163-metre mark, the interior still had to be designed.  His son Constanzo supervised the work until he was replaced in 1905 by Annibale Rigotti, and in 1908 the Mole became home to the Torino Risorgimento Museum.

But the building would not be still; it continued to move and distort, and in the 1930s twenty supporting pillars were encased in concrete, and the ground on which the Mole sits was reinforced.  Annibale Rigotti thought the measures were excessive: “And now,” he wrote, “now it is a dead thing, they have embalmed it while it was still living and pulsating.” Pulsating seems to me a rather startling word to use about a building.  Still, perhaps he was right.  But after the 1953 tornado destroyed the spire, reinforced concrete and an iron tube structure were incorporated into the replacement for support. Repairs finally complete, the building reached its final height in 1961, just in time for the centenary of Italy’s unification.

Meanwhile the Risorgimento Museum had moved to the Palazzo Carignano in 1938, and it was not until the 1990’s that a significant use for the Mole was found.  After much renovation and redesign, the Mole became the home of the National Museum of Cinema.  Visitors can view exhibits on the history of film technology, peruse an enormous collection of movie posters, recline on chaise-longues to watch ever-changing film loops, or visit themed “chapels” where different film genres are shown in appropriate settings.  “Romantic” films (a bit of a euphemism) are viewed from a large, heart-shaped bed, for example.

You can take a glass-walled “Panoramic lift” up to a small platform just below the Mole’s spire.  There are signs at the lift’s entrance warning people with vertigo to stay out.  It’s a 60-second ride, and all the way up Rigotti’s phrase “living and pulsating” echoed in my head; but the view from the platform was strangely calming.  The Alps seemed implausibly near, resting on a winter cushion of atmospheric haze at the edge of the city.  Torino, with its heady mix of old and new, seemed to stretch all the way to the snowy peaks.

I saw the Basilica di Superga, lovely and glowing on its hillside.  I saw a glass-and-steel high-rise under construction in the distance: taller and more stable than the Mole, no doubt: a miracle of modern engineering, and easily forgotten.  But I knew I would never forget Antonelli’s audacious neo-classical rocket-ship of a temple, its needle-like spire pointing boldly toward the sky.

Text © 2018 by Joe Gartman; Photographs © 2018 by Patricia Gartman. First published in Italia! Magazine, June 2018