Triumph and Tragedy

From the viewing platform just below the spire of Turin’s Mole Antonelliana (the world’s tallest unreinforced masonry building), you can see in the distance a handsome late baroque church with a great dome and two belltowers, high atop a hill east of the city.  The church is the Basilica of Superga.  It’s a striking sight, especially in the evening, when it glows golden in the setting sun; and it conjures powerful memories for thousands of Torinese. 

To explain, I must begin with the War of the Spanish Succession, a struggle between the Bourbons, headed by King Louis XIV of France, and the Habsburgs, under Austrian Emperor Leopold I. They both wanted control of Spain and its vast possessions in Europe and the Americas.  In 1700, the last Habsburg king of Spain died without an heir, leaving the crown to one of Louis XIV’s grandsons.  The Austrians were horrified and told everybody that if something wasn’t done immediately, the French would soon control all of Europe. So all the other European rulers chose sides, and the peasantry everywhere prayed their crops wouldn’t be trampled and all their sons conscripted. 

Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, at first supported the French – he was married to one of Louis XIV’s nieces –  but switched sides in 1703, when it seemed the Habsburg side was winning.  (A wise ruler naturally keeps an eye on the weathervane.)  But the martial winds were fickle, and three years later, with most of Savoy in French hands, 40,000 troops besieging Turin, and only 6000 soldiers of his own, he knew he desperately needed help.

And so, on the 3rd of September, 1706, two horsemen spurred their mounts up the steep slopes of the Superga hill, seeking a vantage point from which to observe the French troops below.  One was Victor Amadeus.  The other was his 2nd cousin, Prince Eugene of Savoy, an Austrian general famous for victories against the Ottomans, and for his triumph, with Marlborough, at the Battle of Blenheim.  (French-born, and raised in Louis XIV’s court, Eugene despised the “Sun King”.)  Somehow, marching over the Alps and through Savoy, Eugene had just arrived in the area with 30,000 Austrian and Prussian soldiers.  Now, spotting a weakness in the French deployment, he advised an all-out assault as soon as he could assemble his forces.  At a nearby small chapel on the hilltop, Victor Amadeus knelt before a wooden likeness of the Madonna, asked for her blessing, and promised to build her a great church if his forces prevailed.

On the 6th of September, in a bloody, all-day battle, the French were driven from the field – a major turning point in the war, though hostilities dragged on until 1714, when the Treaty of Utrecht left Spain still in French hands. But Spain was forced to give up most of its European territory, including Sicily, which went to Victor Amadeus.  And it was in Sicily that the new “King of Sicily and Piedmont” met an architect from Messina named Filippo Juvarra.  As Victor Amadeus’ court architect, charged with making Turin a truly royal capital, Juvarra transformed the city: he designed the façade of Palazzo Madama, built elegant new churches and palaces, including the Palazzo Reale and the Stupinigi hunting lodge. His gracefully arcaded, interconnected piazzas replaced Turin’s slums.  Finally, he fulfilled the Duke’s vow by designing the Basilica of Superga, dedicated to Our Lady of Grace.  Construction began in 1717.  It wasn’t finished until 1731, but Victor Amadeus lived long enough to see the church completed.  He died in October, 1732.

In the Royal Crypt of the Basilica are the tombs of most Savoy kings and princes since Victor Amadeus II,  though two Savoy kings of Italy, Victor Emmanuele II and Umberto I, are buried in the Pantheon in Rome.

For more than two centuries, the Basilica was, for most people, simply a reminder of the Duke’s vow and the victory that answered his prayer.  That changed in an instant on the 4th of May 1949, when a small three-engine passenger plane, a Fiat G.212, flying in a thunderstorm with 27 passengers and 4 crew aboard, crashed into a retaining wall at the rear of the church.  Everyone on the plane died, probably without warning, although the pilots may have seen the wall just before impact.  Visibility was only 40 metres, and the plane was flying at 110 miles per hour.  The pilot had reported his altitude as 2200 metres four minutes before the crash; the Basilica’s altitude is 672 metres.   

The first people who reached the scene of the accident were local residents who heard the crash and saw the smoke.  It wasn’t until one of them opened a suitcase and found it contained shirts marked “Torino FC” that anyone suspected who’d been on the plane; in fact, virtually all the “Grande Torino” football team, the pride of the city, winners of five straight Serie A titles, were lost, along with coaches, the manager, team officials, and three journalists. 

Half-a-million people lined the streets of Turin for a funeral procession two days later.  Since the team was leading the Serie A season again, with only four games to go, all their rival teams, unwilling to benefit from a malignant fate, requested that the title be awarded to Torino.  There have been annual observances held on the Superga hill on the 4th of May since the tragedy, until they were interrupted by the Covid pandemic. 

On the 4th of May, 2022, the 73rd anniversary of the crash, 3000 people climbed the hill, and a mass of remembrance was celebrated in the Basilica.

Text © 2023 by Joe Gartman; Photographs © 2023 by Patricia Gartman. First published in Italia! Magazine, December/January 2023)