The power circle
Royal, Madama and Regio in one orbit.
Fred Romero from Paris, France — CC BY 2.0 · FOTO:Fortepan — ID 61391: Adományozó/Donor: Lencse Zoltán. archive copy at the Wayback Machine — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Moliva — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Meinhertz77 — CC BY-SA 4.0
The city resisted breaking the royal square's unity, leaving the church behind an ordinary palace front — and Guarini compensated within: interlacing rib-dome, an eight-star turning stone into mathematical light-lattice. The result is Italy's greatest free surprise: plain door, then awe.
Turin's opera house — its historic building burned (1936) and was rebuilt daringly seventies inside the surviving front: a red ovoid hall ranked among the twentieth century's most successful. Its season merits attendance, its day tours the modern-architecture curious.
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Castello is Turin's geometric and royal centre: from it the city was planned, its streets a Roman-souled grid, and around it all power circles — the Royal Palace behind its gilded rail, Palazzo Madama two-faced amid the space, the Teatro Regio's modern dome behind its old front, and the church of San Lorenzo disguised without church façade, hiding Guarini's octopus dome — Baroque's most astonishing cupola from within. Four squares and arcades branch from it like arms, the city's lines meeting beneath its floor — the axis you will cross dozens of times, each with a new face, from clerks' morning to theatre night. Stand at its centre and turn a full circle: rarely do four centuries of power surround you so coherently.
Royal, Madama and Regio in one orbit.
Façade-less San Lorenzo hiding the ribbed marvel.
Piazza Castello, 10122 Turin