28/06/2023
Re: Old Masters International Spring 2023: Grand Tour
Torino: Italy’s un-Italian Urbis Nobilis
"What a dignified, severe city, wonderful clarity, autumn colours, an exquisite sense of well-being that is common to all things".
--Friederich Nietzsche, long-time resident of 18 Piazza Carlo Alberto, birthplace of “Ecce Homo”
Indeed, what a wonderful place she is—the grande dame capital of the old Kingdom. With plucky, proud castles silhouetted atop the forested outskirts of the city and the jagged Alps so immediately present in the far distance, this airy, cream-colored baroque city built by the Dukes of Savoy before they became royals is a kind of combination Vienna and St. Petersburg—which is to say quite unlike the other great cities of the Bel Paese. No maze of medieval streets here; no ‘Latin’ exuberance in either form or content. Rather, the city is a meticulously planned grid—one that had inspired Pierre L’Enfant in the design of Washington DC—made up wide, white boulevards entirely lined in elegant arcades or "portici". It is a lovely hub of civilization and of not-so-underground monarchists, some of whom belong to what old Torino hosts as one of the oldest private clubs in the country. My knight and I were arm-in-arm ambling its boulevards this weekend, en route to the antiques and wine and exceptional Piemontese cuisine of nearby Monferrato, the land that once bred some of the most poetic warriors in European history.
What first strikes you is block after bright neo-classical city block of Viennese style chandeliered cafe litteraires—think Baratti & Milano or Caffe Fiorio-- whose doors are framed with antique wood entrances and gold lettering; where Cavour once mapped out his monarchy, Hermann Melville and Mark Twain met on their Grand Tour and radicals plotted against the Habsburgs. The servizi still wear uniforms and the famous "Bicherin" coffee--a small warm glass of hot Torinese chocolate, then coffee and then a dollop of frothy milk--is still sensational. The next thing attentive investigator will take note of is the amount of rare book stores—I counted five in a few city blocks—with great, magnificent tomes gracing soaring vitrines, not because these will sell but because it is important to have them there. Antique maps, of course, are sold as well and you may just see a copy of the famous “Theatrum Saubaudiae”, a 1684 series of birds’ eye view maps of the territories of the Duchy of Savoy in minute detail that were printed first as detailed copper engravings at the famous Blaeu of Amsterdam, then the most famous publisher of the time, and then sent as gifts of the Savoy to all the great courts of the continent. Near such alluring literary haunts one will then see traditional, old cinemas tucked away in clean 'galleria', among which are those whose walkways are made of "bardaglio piemontese", a lustrous green local stone. It is a city that compliments one’s intelligence as much as it does one’s aesthetic sense.
The next striking aspect is the perspective. Coming out of the beautiful train station, for instance, one looks northward onto a wide boulevard flanked by two magnificent chapels aand lined by the aforementioned arcades continuing all the way down to the Palazzo Reale (royal palace)--now an extraordinary art museum—royal apartments museum of the House of Savoy that ranks with the Kunsthistorisches and Schoenbrunn in Vienna. (Nor to be missed is the private art collection of Old Masters housed there of the late, great industrialist Riccardo Gualino, nemesis of the Agnelli the Elder). Looking south from the royal palace, one would see in the distance the beautiful Stupingi hunting “residence” and Moncalieri castle and Valentino castle just a bit further away—this last being where King Vidor’s “War and Peace” was filmed. In 1997, UNESCO selected 22 of the palaces and villas built by the Savoy dukes for its famous list of world treasures—11 in the city itself and 11 from its immediate surrounding areas.
Look east and you see across the Po over one of the five city bridges the Chiesa della Grande Madre di Dio, one of the most important Catholic churches of Torino and built in the style of the Pantheon in Rome. In this immediate area one finds the "Montmartre" section of city, Monte dei Cappucini, with all the charm of southern France favored by members of the old nobility; this area extends into a lush, tree-dense colline of villas where in the near distance one sees the elaborate, striking Chiesa di Santa Maria al Monte
distance, towering on a hill, one sees the outline of Superga, the royal crypt of the Savoy and one of the three great religious monuments of Piemonte. Built in the early 1700s and resembling
St Peters Basilica in Rome, its construction fulfilled a vow of the Duke of Savoy in defeating the French during the War of Spanish Succession (Europe’s thirteen year-long first world war).
One cannot go without mentioning, of course, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud at the Palazzo Reale, on its own worth the trip to the city. It was built to house the linen cloth imprinted with the image that of Christ that has been owned by the Savoy family since 1453. The architecture of this chapel, completed in 1643, is one of the great feats of the Baroque mind: the architect Guarino Guarini “conceived a structure that defied every canon of architecture”, as the Palazzo Reale writes of the remarkable structure, “inserting on the pre-existing cylindrical body a new volume consisting of three large arches sloping inward like triangles over six levels, overlapping and staggered”. The description goes on to read: “The Chapel’s elevation, in the interweaving of its different elements, in the attention to decorative and symbolic details, in the importance given to the contribution of light, has no terms of comparison in Western architecture”.
In 1694 the Shroud was moved to the imposing double central altar designed by Antonio Bertola in the dramatic Piemontese black stone of Frabosa. It remained there until 1993, when it was placed in the cathedral.
Torino is one of those European second-cities that is unusually overlooked, or strangely stereotyped. (“The Detroit of Italy”, as it is known. But the famous Lignotto factory is rather a ways from the city center and also happens to be rather beautiful). The city has, as Paris, as London, as Rome etc all have, an immigrant infested “banlieu” that has built up over the years and is unfortunate. It is my hope these are eventually gentrified back into grandeur.
But the city itself is so elegant, so clean, grand and civilized. Keeping in mind that it is also about half the cost of the more prominent cities, it is a place to consider should one be contemplating exile-escape-greener pastures-new vistas. Completely enchanting.
Below: A beautiful afternoon on Piazza Carignano, named for a princely branch of the House of Savoy.
