History

Turin’s Jewish community acquired the land on what was then called Contrada del Cannon d’Oro (today Via Montebello) in the early 1860s following the Albertine Statute’s grant of religious liberty. The first plans, approved in 1863, showed a synagogue 47 metres high. Alessandro Antonelli — already famous for his domed Basilica di San Gaudenzio in Novara — was appointed architect, and immediately began proposing modifications: the dome was to rise higher, then higher still. By 1869 the community had run out of funds and completed a temporary flat roof at 70 metres, abandoning the project.

The City of Turin purchased the unfinished structure in 1878, recognising it as too significant (and too structurally peculiar) to leave half-built. Antonelli resumed work under municipal patronage. The tower reached its final height of 167.5 metres in 1889 — the year the Eiffel Tower opened in Paris. Antonelli himself died in 1888, a year before the completion he had spent three decades pursuing. Friedrich Nietzsche, resident in Turin during 1888-89, described the Mole as “perhaps the most inspired architectural work ever created.”

Throughout the twentieth century the building was used for exhibitions and as a repository. A major restoration in 1961 reinforced the original masonry with steel and concrete. The Museo Nazionale del Cinema — founded in 1941 and long housed in the Palazzo Chiablese — transferred to the Mole in 2000 after a comprehensive redesign of the interior by the studio Gabetti e Isola.