Description
The Pietro Micca Museum tells the story of the siege of Turin in 1706 and lets you go down into the underground tunnels of the old Citadel, a short walk from the Keep, near Porta Susa. Here a Savoyard miner became the city's hero.
In the rooms above and below ground there are 18th-century weapons, maps, paintings and large scale models reconstructing the Citadel and the siege sites. But the heart of the visit is underground.
The countermine galleries are part of a network of tunnels over 21 kilometers long that started from the Citadel. They were used to reach the explosive charges to be set off against the attackers. In some places they are quite low.
At the end you reach Pietro Micca's staircase and the spot where his body was found. You can still see the site of the explosion.
"Get out of there, you're longer than a day without bread! Leave it to me." These are the words a chronicler attributes to Pietro Micca, a soldier-miner, on the night between August 29 and 30, 1706.
Turin was besieged by the French, and some enemy grenadiers had entered the tunnels under the Citadel. They were breaking down the door of a staircase, and Micca's comrade could not light the slow fuse.
Micca lit a very short one. The explosion brought the staircase down and stopped the French, but he died. His deed, they say, saved the city, though historians debate how much danger it was really in.
The museum came into being thanks to General Guido Amoretti, who in the 1950s discovered the tunnels by watching the work at a building site near his office. In 1958 he found that very staircase.
The museum was inaugurated in 1961, for the centenary of Italian unification, on the site where during the siege the French had placed an artillery battery. Of the imposing pentagonal Citadel built by Emmanuel Philibert in 1564, the Keep remains, at the intersection with Corso Galileo Ferraris.
In the rooms above and below ground there are 18th-century weapons, maps, paintings and large scale models reconstructing the Citadel and the siege sites. But the heart of the visit is underground.
The countermine galleries are part of a network of tunnels over 21 kilometers long that started from the Citadel. They were used to reach the explosive charges to be set off against the attackers. In some places they are quite low.
At the end you reach Pietro Micca's staircase and the spot where his body was found. You can still see the site of the explosion.
"Get out of there, you're longer than a day without bread! Leave it to me." These are the words a chronicler attributes to Pietro Micca, a soldier-miner, on the night between August 29 and 30, 1706.
Turin was besieged by the French, and some enemy grenadiers had entered the tunnels under the Citadel. They were breaking down the door of a staircase, and Micca's comrade could not light the slow fuse.
Micca lit a very short one. The explosion brought the staircase down and stopped the French, but he died. His deed, they say, saved the city, though historians debate how much danger it was really in.
The museum came into being thanks to General Guido Amoretti, who in the 1950s discovered the tunnels by watching the work at a building site near his office. In 1958 he found that very staircase.
The museum was inaugurated in 1961, for the centenary of Italian unification, on the site where during the siege the French had placed an artillery battery. Of the imposing pentagonal Citadel built by Emmanuel Philibert in 1564, the Keep remains, at the intersection with Corso Galileo Ferraris.