The Temple Hall
Reclining beneath the dome before the screens โ the museum's enchanted heart.
Wikibusters โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Simone Graziano Panetto from Torino, Italy โ CC BY 2.0 ยท Meinhertz77 โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Avisadehh โ CC0
The Jewish community commissioned a synagogue on a modest budget; he kept raising the design year on year past money, contracts and accepted physics โ until the community disowned the climbing tower and the city bought it. The nonagenarian died just short of completion, leaving Europe's tallest masonry and a name proverbial for nobly reckless architectural ambition.
It succeeds best precisely with them: a fabulous building, a lounging hall, interactive optical games and an adventure lift โ cinema here is spectacle's doorway, not a lecture. Cinephiles add an hour for the artefacts; everyone leaves content.
Two hours: the museum's ascending spiral first, the lift as finale โ sunset from the balcony for the well-timed. The lift-only ticket suits the rushed, at the cost of a museum that deserves better.
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The Mole is Turin as the Eiffel Tower is Paris: a 167-metre needle that at completion (1889) was Europe's tallest masonry building โ begun by the nobly mad architect Antonelli as a synagogue, then driven upward beyond anyone's endurance but his, until the city bought and finished it as its own emblem, today engraved on Italy's two-cent euro. Within lives the National Cinema Museum โ by visitors' consensus among Europe's most enjoyable: the great Temple Hall directly beneath the dome with its reclining seats and giant screens, the spiral of film history winding up around it from shadow-play to Hollywood, in costumes, props and optical toys bewitching every age. The summit is the panoramic glass lift: piercing the dome's heart, suspended in sixty metres of void, up to the needle's balcony โ Turin a stately grid, the Alps its white wall.
Reclining beneath the dome before the screens โ the museum's enchanted heart.
The seventh art's history winding up around the void.
Sixty metres suspended through the dome's heart โ an unforgettable minute.
Via Montebello 20, 10124 Turin