Turin (Torino) was the first stop of our journey from Lausanne to Tuscany. One of the two National museums we visited in Torino was the National Cinema Museum (Museo Nazionale del Cinema) housed in the Mole Antonelliana, an iconic landmark that we had not heard of before our visit.
Mole Antonelliana
The first plan of the Mole, dated to 1862, was for a building that was to become a Jewish synagogue.
The architect, Alexandria Antonelli, decided to develop the building vertically to compensate for the modest size of the allotted footprint.
In the main body of the building, there are no load-bearing walls, only Corinthian columns, a ribbed vault supported by a network of fulcrums, all made by bricks and stones.
Viewed from a distance, the pinnacle of the building is stunning and playful (although that was probably not the intention of the architect). We did not expect to see a set of classical columns and pediment so high up in the air.
Since the work started in 1863, numerous modifications were introduced including parabola-shaped arches which elevated the height of the vault to 112 meters. The construction was halted in 1869 when construction funds ran out.
In 1877, the city bought the building, completed the construction of the vault and then finished the pinnacle in 1889 (6 months after Antonelli died). At 167 meters, it broke the record of the tallest masonry construction.
The building survived an earthquake in 1887. Between 1930 and 1941, it was reinforced with concrete and iron, and part of the pinnacle was rebuilt in 1961 after a hurricane in 1957. Between 1996 and 1999, the building was conservatively restored when it was transformed from the then Risorgimento Museum into the National Cinema Museum.
National Cinema Museum
The museum grew from a collection of artefacts gathered by a young history and literature scholar, Maria Adriana Prolo from 1941. Seven years after she opened her collection as a museum in 1958, the government baptized it as the National Cinema Museum.
We went to the museum after we said goodbye to our friends A and O. There was a short line to buy tickets to the museum. Then we waited for an elevator on the ground floor of the building in an area that resembles the lobby of a 20th century cinema, i.e., shadowy halls with subdued lighting, velvet ropes, heavy curtains and carpet. There was a souvenir store, and an exhibition that traces the history and structure of Mole Antonelliana.
Here are a few our favorite Italian film soundtracks :
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The elevator took us to the Temple Hall – the heart of the museum, a carvenous atrium that is at least ten-storey high, topped by a gold-hued dome. The set designer François Confino remodeled the interior and turned it into a mysterious and captivating space.
On the floor of the Temple Hall are rows of red chaise longues where we rested our tired feet and watched edits of film festivals on two large screens. In front on the chairs is a red carpet area where one can walk among portraits of stars in a simulated photocall.
Fanciful passageways lead from all sides of the Temple Hall to a series of spaces called chapelles. Within the chapelles are various thematic exhibition spaces, for example, the Horror chapel and the Absurd chapel (see below). The other themes are Animation, Western, Sci-fi and the recently added Experience of Virtual Reality.
There are two major itineraries for visitors of the museum: the Archaelogy of Cinema – that traces the technical development of animated moving pictures, e.g., the Magic Lantern, Muybridge’s choronophotography, Edison’s kinetoscope and the Lumiere Brothers’ Cinematographe.
Stationed along the galleries are interactive exhibits that allows different levels of engagement.
The other itinerary is the Cinema Machine – which examines the various processes and elements of film-making – the studios, the directors, the stars, the screenplays, the costumes, lighting and photography, editing and special effects.
From the Temple Hall floor, a grand spiral staircase led us up to a ramp that encircles the interior perimeter of the atrium. From there, we had a birdeye’s view of the main space of the museum.
The exhibits that lined the side of the ramp are biographies of Italian movie stars.
One section that we missed is the Poster Gallery, a prestigious collection that traces the promotion by a graphic poster of films in various era – classic American cinema, great Italian auteurs, mid-century Japanese films, French New Wave and the new Hollywood.
In the middle of the floor of the Temple Hall is the landing for another elevator that took us to a viewing platform that is situated at the top of the atrium and the base of the pinnacle.
A statue of a giant seated winged monster with out-stretched palms gazes dramatically up at the elevator with its mouth agape. This is a reconstruction of the Moloch statue from Giovanni Pastrone’s epic silent movie – Cabiria (1914) – an international blockbuster in that era.
This elevator, essentially a minimalist glass box and a counterweight, quietly glide up and down in the middle of this immense space. The ambiance evokes the style of baroque sci-fi as seen in Blade Runner (Tyrell Corporation headquarters) and Dune (Arrakean Palace).
The chaises longues invite visitors to recline, look up and watch the disappearance of the glass box into a hole in the ceiling, while the counterweight lands on the Temple Hall floor.
As we emerged from the elevator, we were really struck by the contrast between the cozy, artificial lighting of the museum interior and the spectacle of a vast open sky and distant horizons.
We walked around and took in all of Torino in 360 degrees.
We really enjoyed our time there as the structure of the building is truly unique, and so are the collected artifacts and the design of the museum space. This is not a typical art museum. Don’t miss it if you are visiting Northern Italy.
If you like to follow us on this Italian road trip, click here for the next post.