La Mole Antonelliana
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Mole Antonelliana The building was conceived and constructed as a synagogue. The Jewish community of Turin had enjoyed full civil rights since 1848, and at the time that the construction of the synagogue began, Turin was the capital of the new Italian state. The Jewish community, with a budget of 250,000 lire and the intention of having a building worthy of a capital city, contracted the architect, Alessandro Antonelli. Antonelli had recently added a 121m (397 ft) dome and spire to the seventeenth-century Basilica of San Gaudenzio in Novara and he promised to build a synagogue for 280,000 lire. The relationship between Antonelli and the Jewish community was not a happy one. He proposed a series of modifications to the original design which would eventually raise the height of the building to 167.5 m (550 ft), over 46 m (151 ft) metres higher than the dome in the original design. Such changes, in addition to greater costs and a longer construction time than were originally anticipated, annoyed the Jewish community and construction was halted in 1869, with a provisional roof in place. Vittorio Emmanuele II With the transfer of the Italian capital to Florence in 1864, the community shrank but costs and Antonelli's ambition continued to rise. In 1876, the Jewish community, which had spent 692,000 lire for a building that was still far from finished, announced that it was withdrawing from the project. The people of Turin, who had watched the synagogue rise skyward, demanded that the city take over the project. An exchange was arranged between the Jewish community and the city of Turin for a piece of land on which a handsome Moorish Revival synagogue was quickly built. The Mole was dedicated to Victor Emmanuel II and Antonelli resumed construction, increasing the height to 146 m (479 ft), 153 m (502 ft), and finally 167.5 m (550 ft). He worked on the project until his death in October 1888. Antonelli's original vision for the spire was to top it off with a five-pointed star but he later opted for a statue instead, depicting a winged genie, or "genio alato" - one symbol of the House of Savoy. The statue was commissioned to the sculptor Fumagalli, months after Antonelli's death. The design included an embossed and gilded copper genie holding a lance in one hand and a palm branch in the other. On its head was a small five-pointed star supported by a pole. When the star was set in its place on April 10, 1889, it made it, at 167.5m, the tallest brick building in Europe at the time. From 1908 to 1938, the city used the Mole to house its Museum of the Risorgimento, which was moved to the Palazzo Carignano in 1938. The Mole Antonelliana is the tallest unreinforced brick building in the world (built without a steel girder skeleton). La Mole Antonelliana .