History

Pietro Fenoglio was born in Turin in 1865 and trained at the Regio Museo Industriale. His early career combined engineering commissions with decorative work; by 1900 he had developed the Liberty vocabulary that would define his most productive decade. Casa Fenoglio-Lafleur (Corso Francia 8, 1902) is his masterpiece: a four-storey apartment block whose corner oriel window — a continuous sinuous protrusion from ground to eaves, faced in polychrome tiles and topped with a glass-and-iron cap — is the most recognisable Liberty element in any Italian city. Fenoglio designed over twenty buildings in Turin between 1898 and 1918; many survive in Crocetta, Borgo Po and the streets around Corso Francia.

The 1902 Esposizione, organised in Valentino Park, brought international figures including Raimondo D’Aronco — its chief architect — into contact with the Viennese Secession, the Glasgow Four and the Belgian Art Nouveau pioneers. Its exclusion of historical styles made it the first fully modernist international design exhibition; the temporary pavilions were demolished after six months but their influence persisted. The Galleria Subalpina (1874, Emilio Marchesi), Turin’s finest covered passage, predates Liberty by twenty years but established the iron-and-glass aesthetic that Liberty architects would later push to organic extremes.

The Lingotto factory (Via Nizza 230) opened in 1923 as the largest automobile plant in Europe: Matté-Trucco’s design stacked the production line on five floors and placed the test track — two banked curves and two straights — on the roof, 22 metres above street level. Le Corbusier, who visited in 1925, called it one of the most impressive industrial sights in the world. The factory closed in 1982 and was converted by Renzo Piano into a conference, hotel and concert complex; the rooftop track — and the helipad at one curved end — survive.