Description
The Mastio della Cittadella (Citadel Keep) is what remains of the great pentagonal fortress of the Savoy in Turin, in the southwest corner of the center, between Corso Galileo Ferraris and Via Cernaia. The two-story entrance building is the only part to have survived the demolitions, and it is tied to the hero of the siege of 1706, Pietro Micca.
The Citadel was commissioned by Duke Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, who had moved the capital from Chambéry to Turin and wanted modern defenses. It was built between 1564 and 1570 to a design by Francesco Paciotto: to make room for it, an entire district was torn down, along with the church of the Santi Martiri.
It was a pentagon with mighty bastions at the corners, surrounded by a dry moat: water would not stay there, because the ground drained so well. At the center stood the Cisternone, a well with a double helical ramp to supply water in case of siege. A popular legend says the walls were stuffed with Roman columns, tombstones and statues.
Beneath the fortress stretched a dense maze of tunnels, for countermines. On the night between August 29 and 30, 1706, during the siege by the Franco-Spanish army, the miner-soldier Pietro Micca, from Biella, blew himself up with some twenty kilos of powder to bring down a passage and stop the enemy.
Nearly all the tunnels have survived intact and are part of the Pietro Micca and Siege of Turin of 1706 Civic Museum behind the Keep. In front of the Mastio's small gardens, toward Corso Galileo Ferraris, a marble statue by Giuseppe Cassano has honored the hero since 1864.
In 1799 the Keep briefly housed Pope Pius VI, on his way to France and exile. It also served as a state prison: in 1748 the Neapolitan historian Pietro Giannone died there, having been arrested on the orders of Charles Emmanuel III. A plaque to the right of the entrance commemorates the executions of the Waldensians in 1535.
Siege techniques changed and in the 19th century the fortress became obsolete. In 1856 it was decided to demolish it entirely, except for the Keep. Even during the Napoleonic occupation, when many walls and bastions were torn down, the Keep had been spared, in recognition of the building's quality.
The building houses the National Historical Museum of Artillery. In 1961 a large 15th-century bronze cannon, the Turkish bombard, was displayed in front of the Keep, and then brought inside the museum in 2008.
Don't miss
• The Keep.
• The statue of Pietro Micca.
• The tunnels of the Pietro Micca Museum.
Did you know?
• In 2001 the tunnels were filled with sandbags to protect them from the vibrations of the subway's tunnel boring machine.
• The little gardens appear in the film "The Days of Abandonment," based on the novel by Elena Ferrante.
The Citadel was commissioned by Duke Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, who had moved the capital from Chambéry to Turin and wanted modern defenses. It was built between 1564 and 1570 to a design by Francesco Paciotto: to make room for it, an entire district was torn down, along with the church of the Santi Martiri.
It was a pentagon with mighty bastions at the corners, surrounded by a dry moat: water would not stay there, because the ground drained so well. At the center stood the Cisternone, a well with a double helical ramp to supply water in case of siege. A popular legend says the walls were stuffed with Roman columns, tombstones and statues.
Beneath the fortress stretched a dense maze of tunnels, for countermines. On the night between August 29 and 30, 1706, during the siege by the Franco-Spanish army, the miner-soldier Pietro Micca, from Biella, blew himself up with some twenty kilos of powder to bring down a passage and stop the enemy.
Nearly all the tunnels have survived intact and are part of the Pietro Micca and Siege of Turin of 1706 Civic Museum behind the Keep. In front of the Mastio's small gardens, toward Corso Galileo Ferraris, a marble statue by Giuseppe Cassano has honored the hero since 1864.
In 1799 the Keep briefly housed Pope Pius VI, on his way to France and exile. It also served as a state prison: in 1748 the Neapolitan historian Pietro Giannone died there, having been arrested on the orders of Charles Emmanuel III. A plaque to the right of the entrance commemorates the executions of the Waldensians in 1535.
Siege techniques changed and in the 19th century the fortress became obsolete. In 1856 it was decided to demolish it entirely, except for the Keep. Even during the Napoleonic occupation, when many walls and bastions were torn down, the Keep had been spared, in recognition of the building's quality.
The building houses the National Historical Museum of Artillery. In 1961 a large 15th-century bronze cannon, the Turkish bombard, was displayed in front of the Keep, and then brought inside the museum in 2008.
Don't miss
• The Keep.
• The statue of Pietro Micca.
• The tunnels of the Pietro Micca Museum.
Did you know?
• In 2001 the tunnels were filled with sandbags to protect them from the vibrations of the subway's tunnel boring machine.
• The little gardens appear in the film "The Days of Abandonment," based on the novel by Elena Ferrante.