The Mole Antonelliana () is a major

landmark A landmark is a recognizable natural or artificial feature used for navigation, a feature that stands out from its near environment and is often visible from long distances. In modern-day use, the term can also be applied to smaller structures ...

building in

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

, Italy, named after its architect,

Alessandro Antonelli Alessandro Antonelli (July 14, 1798 – October 18, 1888) was an Italian architect of the 19th century. He was the most prominent Neoclassicism, Neoclassical 19th-century architect in Piedmont, with a long and prolific career that included design ...

. A '' mole'' in

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

is a building of monumental proportions. Construction began in 1863, soon after

Italian unification The unification of Italy ( ), also known as the Risorgimento (; ), was the 19th century political and social movement that in 1861 ended in the annexation of various states of the Italian peninsula and its outlying isles to the Kingdom of ...

, and was completed in 1889, after the architect's death. Originally conceived of as a

synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...

, it now houses the

Museo Nazionale del Cinema The National Museum of Cinema () located in Turin, Italy, is a motion picture museum fitted out inside the Mole Antonelliana tower. It is operated by the ''Maria Adriana Prolo Foundation'', and the core of its collection is the result of the work ...

(National Museum of Cinema), and is believed to be the tallest museum in the world. A representation of the building is featured on the obverse of the Italian 2 euro cent coin.

Catalan vault The Catalan vault (), also called thin-tile vault, Catalan turn, Catalan arch, boveda ceiling (Spanish ''bóveda'' 'vault'), or timbrel vault, is a type of low brickwork arch forming a vaulted ceiling that often supports a floor above. It is co ...

s are featured in the ceiling of the ground floor under the atrium, which are relatively rare in Italy but popular in Spain, where they originated.

History

Construction

The building was conceived and constructed as a

. The Jewish community of Turin had enjoyed full civil rights since 1848, and at the time the construction of the synagogue began, Turin was the capital of the new Italian state, a position it held only from 1860 to 1864. The community, with a budget of 250,000 lire and the intention of having a building worthy of a capital city, hired Alessandro Antonelli. Antonelli had recently added a dome and spire to the seventeenth-century

Basilica of San Gaudenzio The Basilica of San Gaudenzio is a church in Novara, Italy. It is the highest point in the city. It is dedicated to Gaudentius of Novara, first Christian bishop of the city. History The first church dedicated to the saint existed near the curre ...

Novara Novara (; Novarese Lombard, Novarese: ) is the capital city of the province of Novara in the Piedmont (Italy), Piedmont region in northwest Italy, to the west of Milan. With 101,916 inhabitants (on 1 January 2021), it is the second most populous ...

and promised to build a synagogue for 280,000 lire. The relationship between Antonelli and the Jewish community was not happy. He proposed a series of modifications which raised the final height to , over 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 transfer of the Italian capital to

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. 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, 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 Moorish Revival or Neo-Moorish is one of the exotic revival architectural styles that were adopted by architects of Europe and the Americas in the wake of Romanticism, Romanticist Orientalism. It reached the height of its popularity after the mi ...

synagogue was quickly built. The Mole was dedicated to Victor Emmanuel II. Antonelli resumed construction, increasing the height to , , and finally . 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 A five-pointed star (☆), geometrically an equilateral concave decagon, is a common ideogram in modern culture. Comparatively rare in classical heraldry, it was notably introduced for the flag of the United States in the Flag Act of 1777 and si ...

, but he later opted for a statue instead, depicting an angel, or "genio alato" - one symbol of the

House of Savoy The House of Savoy (, ) is a royal house (formally a dynasty) of Franco-Italian origin that was established in 1003 in the historical region of Savoy, which was originally part of the Kingdom of Burgundy and now lies mostly within southeastern F ...

. The statue was commissioned to the sculptor Fumagalli, months after Antonelli's death. The design included an embossed and gilded

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

genie holding a

lance The English term lance is derived, via Middle English '' launce'' and Old French '' lance'', from the Latin '' lancea'', a generic term meaning a wikt:lancea#Noun">lancea'', a generic term meaning a spear">wikt:lancea#Noun">lancea'', a generi ...

in one hand and a

palm branch The palm branch, or palm frond, is a symbol of victory, triumph, peace, and eternal life originating in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world. The palm ''(Phoenix (plant), Phoenix)'' was sacred in Mesopotamian religions, and in ancient E ...

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 10 April 1889, it brought the total height of the Mole to , making it the tallest brick building in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

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 Palazzo Carignano is a historical building in the centre of Turin, Italy, which houses the Museum of the Risorgimento. It was a private residence of the Princes of Carignano, after whom it is named. Its rounded façade is different from other f ...

in 1938. The Mole Antonelliana is the tallest unreinforced brick building in the world (built without a steel girder skeleton).

Repairs

On 11 August 1904, a violent storm caused the winged genie to collapse, but luckily it stayed suspended against one of the terraces of the structure. Following reconstruction work, it was replaced by a 5-pointed star made of copper and measuring 4 meters in diameter. The design, by Ernesto Ghiotti, was similar to the original one seen on the head of the genie, and fell in 1953: it has been later replaced by a smaller three-dimensional, 12-pointed star. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the building largely escaped the bombings of 6 December 1942, which hit many military targets in nearby Via Verdi, and destroyed the neighbouring Teatro di Torino. On 23 May 1953, a violent cloudburst, accompanied by a tornado, destroyed the uppermost of the pinnacle, which was rebuilt in 1961 as a metal structure faced with stone. Guido Chiarelli carried out the project for the lighting of the pinnacle, at the end of the reconstruction work.

Present

Since 2000, the building has housed the

. The Mole appears on the reverse of the two-cent Italian euro coins and was the inspiration for the official

emblem An emblem is an abstract art, abstract or representational pictorial image that represents a concept, like a moral truth, or an allegory, or a person, like a monarch or saint. Emblems vs. symbols Although the words ''emblem'' and ''symbol'' ...

of the

2006 Winter Olympics The 2006 Winter Olympics (), officially the XX Olympic Winter Games () and also known as Torino 2006, were a winter multi-sport event held from 10 to 26 February in Turin, Italy. This marked the second time Italy had hosted the Winter O ...

, as well as those of the 2005 World

Bocce (, or , ), sometimes anglicized as bocce ball, bocci, or boccie, is a ball sport belonging to the boules family. Developed into its present form in Italy, it is closely related to English bowls and French , with a common ancestry from anc ...

Championships and the

2006 World Fencing Championships The 2006 World Fencing Championships were held at the Oval Lingotto in Turin, Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, ...

. The building also lent its name to one of Italian football's oldest derbies, the

Derby della Mole The Derby della Mole is the local derby played out between Turin's most prominent Association football, football clubs, Juventus FC, Juventus and Torino FC, Torino. It is also known as the Derby di Torino or the Turin Derby in English. It is na ...

, between Turin football clubs

Torino Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

and

Juventus Juventus Football Club (; from , ), commonly known as Juventus or colloquially as Juve (), is an Italian professional Association football, football List of football clubs in Italy, club based in Turin, Piedmont, who compete in Serie A, the ...

. On one side of the four-faced dome, the first

Fibonacci number In mathematics, the Fibonacci sequence is a Integer sequence, sequence in which each element is the sum of the two elements that precede it. Numbers that are part of the Fibonacci sequence are known as Fibonacci numbers, commonly denoted . Many w ...

s are written with red neon lights: they are part of the artistic work ''Il volo dei Numeri'' (''Flight of the Numbers'') by Mario Merz. In December 2017, the Mole was illuminated with over 6000 LED lights, an unprecedented event to mark 110 years since the establishment of Aem Torino, Iren, a company that supplies electricity to the city.

In popular culture

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche bec ...

greatly admired the building, associating it with the figure

Zarathustra Zarathushtra Spitama, more commonly known as Zoroaster or Zarathustra, was an Iranian religious reformer who challenged the tenets of the contemporary Ancient Iranian religion, becoming the spiritual founder of Zoroastrianism. Variously descr ...

and wrote, "Earlier I walked past the Mole Antonelliana, perhaps the most brilliant work of architecture ever built—strangely, it has no name—as a result of an absolute drive into the heights—it recalls nothing so much as my Zarathustra. I baptized it ''Ecce homo'' and in that spirit placed an enormous free space around it." The Mole was featured in the fourth leg of the American reality competition show '' The Amazing Race 20''. The building (including the interior with its Museum of Cinema) was used extensively in the 2004 Italian film ''Dopo Mezzanotte'' (''After Midnight''). A stylized version of the building appeared in the logo for the

. The mascot of the 2025 Special Olympics Winter Games, Moly, is an

otter Otters are carnivorous mammals in the subfamily Lutrinae. The 13 extant otter species are all semiaquatic, aquatic, or marine. Lutrinae is a branch of the Mustelidae family, which includes weasels, badgers, mink, and wolverines, among ...

with a hat shaped like the Mole.

Gallery

File:Mole Antonelliana from Piazza Statuto.jpg, File:Progetto G. Chiarelli.JPG, Project for the lighting of Mole Antonelliana in 1961. File:Mole Antonelliana Punta.JPG, Star on the summit File:Genio_Alato_inside_Mole_Antonelliana.jpg, The Genio Alato on display within the Mole File:Mole Antonelliana 17 marzo.jpg, Decorated in national colours for the 150th anniversary of Italian unification File:Mole Antonelliana with LED lights, anniversary of Aem Iren.jpg, Decorated in LED lights for the 110th anniversary of the establishment of Aem/Iren

References

External links

Website of the National Museum of Film (in English)
* {{Authority control Synagogues completed in 1889 Buildings and structures in Turin Towers in Italy Synagogue buildings with domes Synagogues in Piedmont Former synagogues in Italy Neoclassical architecture in Piedmont Tourist attractions in Turin Neoclassical synagogues 1889 establishments in Italy 19th-century synagogues in Italy