Two Museums, One Long Day in Turin

What a crazy day!

Fernando and I took a trip downtown at around 11:30 AM to grab lunch and visit the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) and the Museo Nazionale del Cinema (National Cinema Museum). There are so many great things to talk about, so in this post I will limit myself to just what is in the National Cinema Museum. I'll speak later about the Egyptian Museum, public transportation system, lunch and dinner, and what the streets downtown are like.

The National Cinema Museum is housed in the Mole Antonelliana - a building that is considered the symbol of Turin.  At 548 feet tall, it is the tallest museum in the world, the tallest building in Turin, and one of the tallest buildings in Italy.  It was originally designed to be a synagogue, but the lower area has since been converted into a museum.  From afar, you can already see the Mole Antonelliana's sky-scraping spire, but as you approach it, you can better realize it's full grandeur.

The museum exhibits start off with an introduction to optics.  My favorite part of this section was a large, strange-looking drawing on the floor that looked normal when viewed off the reflection of a metal column.

After this introduction came an exhibit on early film technology, though this area was much too dark to get any decent photographs.  Still, we were able to find many great treasures later on, including these sketches of the set design for The Empire Strikes Back,

the original cape used in the production of Superman: The Movie,

and an authentic alien prop (along with other props) from Alien.

Meanwhile, clips of various movies of all kinds were played on walls all over the museum.  Many of these clips were from some of my favorite movies, and many of them were also dubbed in Italian, which made for an interesting show.  They didn't dub the singing in the musicals, but that would have been weird!

Around the museum were some nice photos of actors, directors, behind the scenes material, etc.  I tried to take pictures of some other really nice things, but they didn't turn out too well.  We saw: an original copy of the screenplay of Citizen Kane, a bowler hat worn by Charlie Chaplin, a costume from Lawrence of Arabia, and some pre-production masks from Star Wars and Planet of the Apes.

My favorite part of the museum was the poster gallery, which had some original posters from the times when what are now classic movies were still new.  This gallery was especially interesting because many of these posters were in Italian!  For example:

Star Wars

Raging Bull

A Clockwork Orange

Seven Samurai

Rear Window

Singin' in the Rain

Gone With the Wind

Not all of the posters, however, were in Italian.  Some of them were in their original language, though I don't want to put too many pictures on here.

For a little extra in admission, Fernando and I were also able to take a glass elevator up to a platform above the dome of the Mole Antonelliana.  We didn't go nearly all the way to the top of the spire, but were still up high enough (about 279 feet up) to get a nice view of Turin.  Unfortunately, a day that was originally clear and sunny turned completely overcast while we were at the museum.  Still, the view is breathtaking.  You can see that most of the roofs are a nice, organic, earthy color, and that some major streets are lined with trees.  Of course, it's also nice to have hills in the background instead of skyscrapers.  You also might be able to see the Basilica di Superga on top of the hill all the way to the left (you can click on the picture to zoom in).

In this next picture, you can see a building with a dome towards the center of the frame.  That is the Chiesa della Gran Madre di Dio (Church of the Great Mother of God).  Right in front of it flows il Fiume Po (the Po River), which is one of the three main rivers in Italy.  The river starts near the Italian-French border and runs approximately 400 miles, through Turin, and all the way to Venice.

Once we went back down and exited the building, rain had just begun to fall.  We still needed to eat dinner though, so we grabbed a quick pizza.  By the time we finished, the rain had picked up.  This situation was only made worse when we took the metro in the wrong direction and ended up about 15 stops away from where we wanted to be.  When we realized our error and got off the train to cross over and take it back in the other direction, it was already pouring, thundering, windy and cold.  Our hopes were raised when a train passed by, but sadly it was out of service.  So was the next one.  Finally, after waiting in the cold for probably close to half an hour, a train arrived and we made it home all right... at 10PM.

Unless the weather is really horrible tomorrow, we plan to go out to town again.  If there is some rain, we'll be prepared.  Already I'm overwhelmed by things to blog about!  But I think I'll be able to catch up over the course of the week.  Ciao!