Impressions

    Mountains, lakes and places of art fill this land of variety and colour, pointing to the sky with the grandeur of ancient monumental buildings that stand out proud against the profile of the Alps
    Cities full of art offer centres with wonderful constructions, multiplied in history and still intact in their solemn greatness.
    Medieval towers of opulent churches and charming castles and villages emerge from the plain.
    So a constellation of palaces and buildings that gradually leads to the magnificence of the baroque capital.
    Turin exhibits rich and sumptuous streets, although rigorous in their lines, which are lost in infinity, accompanying in a cultural journey that ranges from Roman to post-modern.
    Parks and gardens, designed by famous landscape architects, wrap with their lively nature, now wild, now gently cultivated by man, in a set of lush beauty.
    Panels of extraordinary evocative power, of yearning and melancholy contemplation, are piled within the ancient walls, among woods and lakes to the mountains, with their blue profile capture the vision and gather it around the enchantment of green valleys, drawn by the bubbling loops of the tributaries of the Po.

Baroque scenarios

    From Emanuele Filiberto, who moved the capital of the duchy from Chambéry to Turin, the Savoias intend to lay the foundations for a strongly centralized Piedmontese state, expressing their political vision through the design of an ambitious and monumental scenic apparatus able to celebrate properly their power and splendor of their court.
    The planning of peripheral and central residences therefore creates a complex of impressive grandeur, turning a town of modest size, though of illustrious past, in a sort of extended palace, where the formal unit is represented by a style full of exuberant richness and decorative invention , but in a regular and imposing structure, to highlight the military vocation of the dynasty, expressing both rigor and innovation, simplicity and richness, power and sophistication.
    The extensive use of a versatile but simple material like brick, with the most advanced achievements of architecture, allows the creation of an impressive series of magnificent buildings, which completely transformed the ancient center, Roman and medieval, in a Modern and functional capital, able to worthily represent the State and generate admiration and amazement in visitors.
    The baroque profusion is also inserted in a stunning celebration of nature through the creation of immense parks and gardens of legendary reputation, creating an organic fusion of landscape that will become the model for centuries of European palace, beginning with the direct descendant Versailles palace.
    The function of the Baroque assumes a political dimension so precise, by integration between the practical and aesthetic intentions of an state, ambitious but carefully structured, with a capacity of centralization symbolized by the principle of convergence of all directions toward the center, typical of this style whose goal is both pragmatic and wonderful .
    Everything then revolves around the square of the Roman Castle , who in the spectacular view of Filippo Juvarra, great master of ceremonies, represents the legitimacy and continuity of power since the age of the Empire, where a lavish scenography is leaned on the ancient building, towards which everything converges and from which everything moves.
    Therefore, ideal stage of a city in the form of theater, for the perfect representation of a royal power which is already so farsighted to anticipate its Risorgimental fate, with an eye turned toward the Eternal City and the triumph of classicism.
   

Oriental Art Museum of Turin

    Housed in the historic Mazzonis palace, the MAO - Oriental Art Museum - of Turin has one of Asia's most interesting art collections in Italy, with 1,500 works distributed in five separate galleries, on four floors of the building.
    On the ground floor are exposed South Asia collections: from the region of Gandhara, the area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the friezes of the Great Stupa of Butkara and a collection of statues in shale, stucco and terracotta; from India, with examples of art from the 2nd century BC to the 14th century AD, particularly Shunga, Kushana and Gupta; from Southeast Asia, with works of art from Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia's Khmer period.
    The first floor houses the collections from the ancient China, dating from 3000 BC to approximately 900 AD, with examples of funerary art of the Han and Tang periods and other artifacts since the Neolithic.
    On the first and second floor is exposed the artistic production in Japan until the Edo period, with wooden statues inspired by Buddhism, from the 12th to 17th century, painted screens of the17th century, paintings, woodcuts and objects of fine workmanship.
    On the third floor there is an important collection of Tibetan Buddhist art, with sculptures in wood and metal, ritual instruments, temperas from the 12th to 18th century, and dust-jacket of sacred texts of wood carved and painted.
    On the fourth floor then unfolds the gallery of Islamic art from the Middle East, Persia, Turkey and Central Asia, with a rich collection of glazed ceramics, from the 9th to 17th century, valuable collections of bronzes, manuscripts, of which the aesthetic quality of calligraphy is notable, and a valuable collection of Ottoman velvets.