Monday May 15
We had a day and a half to relax and gat a feel for the city and now our itinerary includes some fuller days. Before we start, here is a very brief history of Torino with more to follow. Torino was the first capital of Italy and is the capital of the Piedmont region. The city has a population of around 900,000. When the Roman Empire collapsed, Torino was occupied by different nations and empires. During 1300 to 1600, the city saw immense growth and gained most of its wonderful architecture and cultural buildings. It was the seat of the royal Savoy family and has grandiose palaces to show their wealth. In our first days meandering, we are liking the vibe especially for a large city.
Our day starts with another breakfast in our apartment. Then we are out the door to find our way to the Sassi Superga Railway which climbs to the Basilica di Superga. Our Torino Card gives us free transportation for the next five days and we try it out today. e start by catching Tram #15 to the base of the hill where the incline railway leaves. When we get off, we discover from a sign that the railway is closed during the week as they are working on it and the tracks. It says there is a replacement bus. Around the corner is a bus stop and we wait. A city bus shows up, the driver says he is going to the Basilica and we get on scan our Torino Card and are on our way. Other than a man and his son, we are the only ones on board. A little strange but then the Basilica does not open until 1000 and we are here at 0910. There is a tour of the royal tombs that is at 1030 and I want to make sure we get on it as we have reservations in town later for the Mole Antonella. Hence, we get up here before anyone else as information says they fill up. It is a windy road up the hill and takes about 15 minutes. When we get off the bus, we notice that we can see our first view of the Italian Alps. It is mostly clear with a few clouds and we are able to get a few pictures. It looks like there is quite a bit of snow still on the peaks so hopefully it will melt a bit in the next few weeks.
There is a path that goes around the side of the Basilica so we take it to kill some time. At the back end of the church is a memorial to a soccer team that does when their place crashed into the hill by the church in 1949. As we proceed along the path, there are signs for different hiking trails in the area. We are not ready for that yet, especially looking at the terrain that surrounds us. We do discover a very rare thing in Italy. A restroom that is public and free and not part of a museum or restaurant. We take full advantage of it. We come full circle and sit, enjoying a beautiful view of the Basilica and the alps on this nice sunny morning. At 1000, they do not open the door where the royal tombs are, so we go in to the Basilica instead.
In 1706, the city was suffering from the long siege of the French-Spanish army of Louis XIV. The piedmont and Austrian troops were having a rough time. Duke Vittorio Amedeo II (called the Savoy fox) and his cousin Prince Eugenio of Savoy-Saissons commander of the Austrian troops got on a hill in Superga to observe the battle from above. In the small church on the hill, in front of the Statue of Our Lady of Grace, the Duke made a vow that if he won, he would build a large sanctuary in this place to honor the Virgin. On September 6, 1706, after a hard battle the French Spanish army was defeated and the city was liberated. Vittorio Amedeo II kept his word. He hired a famous architect Fillipo Juvarra to oversee the project. It took a while. The preexisting church was demolished and they also had to lower the hill by 40 meters to accommodate the new foundation. This took 100 diggers a whole year in itself. The new foundation was laid in 1717, the dome completed in 1726, and the Church consecrated in 1731.
During the last years, Vittorio Amedeo II retired and moved back to Chambery, abdicating his throne to his son Carlo Emmanuel II in 1730. Vittorio eventually returned to Piedmont and tried to regain his power, but his son had him arrested and restricted to Rivoli Castle. He died in 1732 and was buried in the Superga. Inside the beautiful church is a chapel that holds the original wooden statue of Our Lady of Grace that Vittorio Amedeo II prayed to to win the battle. Interesting little history.
We exit the church and go back to the entrance for the royal tombs. The door opens and we go inside to get our tickets for the 1030 tour. The admission is included in our Torino card. The tour is only in Italian but we do not care. We start out with the courtyard of the church and then head inside. There is a Room called the Hall of Popes with the portraits of every Pope from the beginning to present, 266 paintings in all. The current Pope is placed under a picture of Jesus. From there we enter the tombs.
The centerpiece of the vaults is the sarcophagus of the King, resting place of King Carlo Alberto VII, King of Sardinia, who signed papers turning the Kingdom into a constitutional Monarchy. It is an exquisite piece of work and the vault includes four marble statues of Faith, Clemence, Charity and Science. Besides King Carlo, there are over 60 members of the royal Savoy Family buried here. There is a chapel for the Queens of the family. Carlo Albertos wife is buried here even though she died before Italy became a country and so was never the Queen of Italy. Another chapel is the chapel of the infants which holds 14 members of the family that died as children. The place is a fascinating trove of Savoy history with amazing sculpture and carving work. Well worth seeing, even if we only understood 20 percent of what was said.
Back outside, we sit again to wait for our bus which is supposed to come at noon. We still have views of the Alps but they are a bit more hazy. We can see the city below us including the church, park and Po River where we were yesterday. A bus shows up that is not a city bus but says it is going down the hill (no where else to go). The driver gets out but allows us on. There is no place to validate our pass so we watch others as they get on and nobody does. After a bit we realize that this is the replacement bus which would have cost us money but since we got here early and took a city bus up, our ride down is apparently free. Good fortune for us as we have a few extra euro for wine. At the bottom, we get back on Tram 15 and get off at Piazza Vittorio Veneto to walk from there to our next destination.
We are heading to Mole Antonelliana which houses the National Cinema Museum. Along the way, we check to see if a Thai restaurant we saw yesterday is open. It is but the seating is full and we do not have the time to wait as we have a reservation at the museum. We decide that we can do takeout and find a place to sit and eat before our reservation time is up. We each get some Thai curry, I get red and Carol gets green. It is still a bit of a wait so when our food comes, we walk over to the Mole so we know we won’t miss our reservation time. While we enjoy our Thai al fresco on a bench, I will give you a bit of history on the Mole Antonelliana. Mole in Italian means a monumental building and this mole was built in 1889 and was originally a Jewish synagogue. It is now the tallest museum in the world. The mole became a monument to national unit and is depicted on the Italian 2 cent euro coin. When it was built, it was the tallest brick building in Europe.
We have two reservations here. The first is to take the glass elevator in the middle of the building to the top for some views and the second is for the Cinema Museum. It is about 10 minutes to our time for the elevator and I ask a girl by the entrance where to go for it and she just points to the left. I go there and some guy tells me this is not the line for the elevator, it is where I just came from. Back I go and watch these two young girls try to manage a very chaotic scene with people asking where to go for the elevator or the museum and some more frantic than others because their time has arrived. Quite a show, but after a group is let in, I get acknowledgement that we are next. We enter the elevator and get an overview of the building and museum as we ascend. On top, we get 360 degree views of the city. We even get some shots of the Basilica on the hill we were at this morning.
Back on the ground level, our time to enter the museum has arrived and we go in. The museum has historical cinematic devices. We start out with very early cinema and devices known as magic lanterns. It projects images painted on a glass slide onto a white wall immersed in darkness. It was invented in 1659 by astronomer Christian Huygens, who sketched a study of the first animated slide ever projected. It was a skeleton in a series of poses juggling his own skull. In 1832 a phenakistiscope took images of a dancer doing a pirouette from 16 different poses drawn on a paper disc. This was the birth of the first moving images in cinematic history. The collection is very extensive and very interesting to see all these old machines that have been preserved here.
The next level has movie props, posters, and various film clips from different movie genres. It also has one of my favorites, a door with the outline of none other than Wile E Coyote cut out of it. this level is somewhat interesting but not as much as the historical stuff. There is just a small amount f the items described above. From here the next levels get into some strange and somewhat graphic models and images. The English translations disappear and we are not sure what it is trying to portray. the last two levels are dedicated to some Italian Horror Director which really means nothing to us and the displays are not that interesting, mostly a poster and film clips from is various movies. All in all, we were expecting much more from this highly touted museum and feel it is overrated. We would not recommend visiting it. Maybe we were spoiled from our trip to France where we visited and amazing movie museum with props, miniatures, and great pieces of movie history.
The bright spot after this museum is stopping at the natural gelato place we found yesterday and getting some before dinner dessert. Amazing again. We stop at. Market and buy a fresh pasta called strozzapretti and salad ingredients for dinner in our apartment.While we are cooking, we are serenaded by someone playing a piano in one of the apartments below us. They are pretty good and we enjoy listening as we sit down to dinner with our balcony doors open. Tomorrow we will check out how the Savoy lived. Thats all folks.
Expenses Tram 3.40E Thai Food Lunch at Curry and Company 13E Panoramic Lift Mole Antonella 14E Gelato 4E Items for Dinner, etc from Carrefour Market 12.99E Strozzapretti pasta Golden Eagle Apartment 106.60E Walked 5.8 Miles
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