Italian Culture Newsletter No. 15

Dear friends,

This week's edition is all about Turin: the city, it's most famous and iconic building, one of its most admired writers and a famous film based on a book by another greatly respected Torinese author. There's also a few more of my photos from Turin. Turin Turin (Torino), formerly Augusta Taurinorum, then Taurinum, is the capital city of Piemonte and was briefly the first, Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is located mainly on the western bank of the Po River. It is a relatively small city with a population in the city proper was 875,698 at the end of 2018.

The city has been a major European political centre since 1563, when it was the capital of the Duchy of Savoy, then of the Kingdom of Sardinia ruled by the House of Savoy and then as capital of the newly created Kingdom of Italy after the Risorgimento. It has sometimes been called "the cradle of Italian liberty" having been the birthplace and home of notable individuals who contributed to the Risorgimento and, particularly Camillo Benso, Count di Cavour. Even though much of its political significance and importance before WWII, Turin became a major European crossroads for industry, commerce and trade and is part of the famous "industrial triangle" along with Milan and Genoa. Turin is ranked third in Italy, after Milan and Rome, for economic strength. It is also home to much of the Italian motor industry, hosting the headquarters of Fiat, Lancia and Alfa Romeo.

The city has a rich culture and history, being known for its art galleries, restaurants, churches, palaces, opera houses, piazzas, parks, gardens, theatres, libraries, museums and other venues. It is also the centre of the ‘slow-cooking’ movement. It boasts Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, and Art Nouveau architecture. Many of Turin's public squares, castles, gardens and elegant palazzi such as the Palazzo Madama, were built between the 16th and 18th centuries. The city is also home to the museum of the Risorgimento and the Mole Antonelliana (which hosts the Museo Nazionale del Cinema). The city has a number of Italy's best universities, colleges and lyceés, e.g., the University of Turin, founded in the 15th century and the Turin Polytechnic. Turin is also the home of the Shroud of Turin and has two famous football teams Juventus F.C. and Torino F.C. In 2006, it hosted the Winter Olympics, when the city authorities carried out major renovation which enhanced the beauty of the city, making the most of its large piazzas and miles of colonnades..

The Taurini were an ancient Celto-Ligurian Alpine people, who occupied the upper valley of the Po River.

In 218 BC, they were attacked by Hannibal when he was allied with their long-standing enemies, the Insubres. The Taurini’s chief town (Taurasia) was captured by Hannibal's forces after a three-day siege. It is believed that a Roman colony was established after 28 BC under the name of Giulia Augusta Taurinorum. Livy and Strabo mention the Taurini' country as including one of the passes of the Alps, which points to a wider use of the name in earlier times.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the town was conquered by the Heruli and the Ostrogoths, recaptured by the Romans but then conquered again by the Lombards (Langobardi) and then by the Franks of Charlemagne (773). The Arduinic dynasty became the Counts of Turin in the 940s until 1050. After the marriage of Adelaide of Susa with Humbert Biancamano's son Otto, the family of the Counts of Savoy gained control. The title was held by the Bishop as count of Turin (1092–1130 and 1136–1191) and the city was ruled as a prince-bishopric by the Bishops. In 1230– 1235 it was ruled by the Marquess of Montferrat, styled as the Lord of Turin. At the end of the 13th century, when it was annexed to the Duchy of Savoy, the city already had 20,000 inhabitants. Many of the gardens and palaces were built in the 15th century when the city was redesigned and when the University of Turin was founded.

Emmanuel Philibert made Turin the capital of the Duchy of Savoy in 1563. Piazza Reale (named Piazza San Carlo today) and Via Nuova (currently Via Roma) were added along with the first enlargement of the walls, in the first half of the 17th century; in the same period the Palazzo Reale was also built. In the second half of that century, a second enlargement of the walls was carried out, with the creation of the arcaded Via Po, connecting Piazza Castello to the bridge over the Po.

In 1706, during the Battle of Turin, the French besieged the city for 117 days without overcoming it. Under the Treaty of Utrecht the Duke of Savoy acquired Sicily, soon traded for Sardinia, and part of the former Duchy of Milan, and so he became king; and Turin became the capital of a European kingdom.

Turin, like the rest of Piedmont, was annexed to the French Empire in 1802. The city became the seat of the prefecture of the Pô departement until the fall of Napoleon in 1814, when the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia was restored with Turin as its capital. The Kingdom joined the British and French in fighting Russia in the Crimean War (1854-56), which helped to gain its allies’ support when Piemonte led the struggle towards the unification of Italy. In 1861, Turin became the capital of the newly proclaimed united kingdom of Italy until 1865, when the capital was moved to Florence and finally to Rome after the 1870 conquest of the Papal States. The 1871 opening of the Fréjus Tunnel made Turin an important communication route between Italy and France. The city in that period had 250,000 inhabitants. Some of the most iconic landmarks of the city, such as the Mole Antonelliana, the Egyptian Museum, the Gran Madre di Dio church and Piazza Vittorio Veneto were built in this period. The late 19th century was also a period of rapid industrialization, especially in the automobile sector: in 1899 Fiat was established in the city, followed by Lancia in 1906. The Universal Exposition held in Turin in 1902 is often regarded as the pinnacle of Art Nouveau design, and the city hosted the same event in 1911. By this time, Turin had expanded to 430,000 inhabitants.

La Mole Antonelliana

After World War I, harsh conditions brought a wave of strikes and workers' protests. In 1920, the Lingotto Fiat factory was occupied. The Fascist regime put an end to the social unrest, banning trade unions and jailing socialist leaders, notably Antonio Gramsci. On the other hand, Benito Mussolini largely subsidised the motor industry, to provide vehicles for the army.

Turin was a target of Allied bombing during World War II and was heavily damaged by the air raids in its industrial areas as well as in the city centre. Along with Milan, Genoa, and La Spezia, Turin was one of Italy's four cities that experienced area bombing by the Allies; the heaviest raid took place on 13 July 1943, when 295 bombers dropped 763 tons of bombs, killing 792 people. Overall, these raids killed 2,069 inhabitants of Turin and destroyed or damaged about 55 % of all buildings in the city.

Castello Vecchio, Turin After the war, Turin was rapidly rebuilt. The city's motor industry played a pivotal role in the Italian economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s, attracting hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the city, particularly from the rural south of Italy. The number of immigrants was so great that Turin was said to be "the third southern Italian city after Naples and Palermo". The population reached 1 million in 1960 and peaked at almost 1.2 million in 1971. The exceptional growth of the city gained it the nickname of the ‘Detroit of Italy’. In the 1970s and 1980s, the oil and motor industry crisis severely hit the city, and its population began to decline, losing more than a quarter of its total in 30 years. The long population decline of the city has begun to reverse itself only in recent years, as the population grew from 865,000 to slightly over 900,000 by the end of the century.

Turin is certainly one of my favourite Italian cities, which we have visited many times.

Turin at sunset