Mole Antonelliana

This building, the Mole Antonelliana tower, is the tallest in a city and it's also a National Museum of Cinema! Where would they use the highest building which is also an architectual monument for the cinema museum? Maybe in the USA, Los Angeles or New York or somewhere in France? Well, nope. This museum is located in Turin, in the north of Italy, and even if it's not that famous from the cinematographic point of view as Rome, Florence or Venice, it has this wonderful and outstanding cinema museum (Museo Nazionale del Cinema) that is also a symbol of the city.

Of course, we all know about Italian cinema that gave us a number of great film directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Giuseppe Tornatore and others, but this truly unique Italian cinema museum is not that well-known unless you visit Turin.

The Mole Antonelliana tower was named after its architect, Alessandro Antonelli. Construction began in 1863 and was completed in 1889. Originally it was projected as a synagogue, then it housed Museum of the Risorgimento and now it houses the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, and is also believed to be the tallest museum and the tallest unreinforced brick building in the world. The core of the collection is the result of the work of the historian and collector Maria Adriana Prolo. The museum houses pre-cinematographic optical devices such as magic lanterns, earlier and current film technologies, stage items, film posters and so on.