JAN+FEB 2017 - CERVINIA, AOSTA AND TURIN

And so now to Turin.  Happily, our 4th floor mansion house garret was reached by a lift.  Even more happily, it was right in the centre on Piazza Castello.  First morning, we trotted across the square to the superb Palazzo Madama 

and up some 40 steps to the first floor by a sweeping staircase 

to a series of high-ceilinged throne/reception rooms displaying portraits, carving, wood floors, intricate ceiling decorations

and a special treasure exhibition showing some glorious Limoges glasswork, including this casket which I coveted
 

Outside (you get a better feeling why it's called Castle Square)
 

we walked past the war monument 

and next to the Mole Antonelliana (building of monumental proportions, named after its architect, Alessandro Antonelli)

It was originally intended to be a synagogue but now houses the National Cinema Museum (apparently the tallest museum in the world - also the tallest unreinforced brick building in the world, ie built without a steel girder skeleton). 

Construction began in 1863, but not completed til 1889, having gone through various iterations.  Progress wastemporarily halted when things went dramatically over-budget and the Jewish community sponsors backed off, but the people of Turin, having watched the synagogue rise, demanded that the city take over the project instead. A 1953 tornado destroyed the top 47m of the pinnacle, and a metal structure was rebuilt in 1961, faced with stone.  

As well as the museum, there's a lift to 85m for a panoramic view of Turin in a bowl surrounded by the peaks

Inspired by what we'd seen from above, we traced the streets towards the Chiesa della Gran Madre di Dio by the river Po and fine square, Piazza Vittoria Veneto.

Next morning, straight across the Piazza Castello to the Palazzo Reale
 

3 floors of galleries, staterooms, bedrooms, ballrooms with vast huge paintings/tapestries/frescoes.and one of ancient artefacts all in one long building with galleries off the side.

From the upper floors were views of the Giardino Reale, Roman Amphitheatre remains (part of which is inside the lower tier of the museum), Porta Palatina, and Duomo tower
 

as well as back over the piazza
 

and, in the distance, the mole

Perhaps the most striking room was the armoury (over and above that gorgeous pietra dura floor)

in which horse armour is modelled by real horses, each favourite apparently lovingly stuffed and mounted after it had gone to the great stable in the sky