Mole Antonelliana

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Mole Antonelliana

Mole Antonelliana, Turin.

The Mole in the ending titles of Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso.

The Mole Antonelliana is a major landmark of the Italian city of Turin. It is named for the architect who built it, Alessandro Antonelli. Construction began in 1863. Nowadays it houses the National Museum of Cinema, and it is believed to be the tallest museum in the world.

The building was conceived and constructed as a Jewish synagogue. The Jewish community of Turin had enjoyed full civil rights since 1848, and, a th time the construction of the synagogue began, Turin was the capital of the new Italian State, a position it held on ly from 1860-64.) The community, with a budget of 250,000 lira and the intention of having a building worhty of a capital city, hired Antonio Antonelli. antonelli was notable for having recently added an "idiosyncratic" 121 metre-high dome and spire to the seventeenth-century Church of San Gaudenzio at Novara. He promised to build a synagogue for 280,000. ^[1] The relationship between Antonelli and the Jewish community was not a happy one. He immediately began to propose a series of modifications which raised the final height to 113 meters--over 47 meters higher than the dome in the original design. Such changes, in addition to greater costs and construction time than were originally anticipated, did not please the Jewish community and construction was halted in 1869 with a provisional roof.

With the removal 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 form the project. The people of Turin, who had watched the synagogue rise skyward, demanded that the city take over the project, which it did. 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. ^[2] The Mole was dedicated to Victor Emanuel II. Antonelli again began construction, which took the height to 146, 153, and finally 167 meters (548 feet).

On May 23, 1953 a very violent cloudburst accompanied by a tornado, destroyed the upmost 47 metres of the pinnacle, which was rebuilt in 1961 as a metal structure covered with stone.

Since 2000, the building has housed the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, the National Museum of Film. The Mole appears on the reverse of the two cent Italian euro coins and was the official emblem of the 2006 Winter Olympics. It is also the official emblem of the 2005 World Bocce Championships and the 2006 World Fencing Championships.

On one side of the four-faced dome, the first Fibonacci numbers are written with red neon lights: they are part of the artistic work Il volo dei Numeri ("Flight of the numbers") by Mario Merz.