April 19, 2025

Torino, Italia

Saturday, a good day to take it easy. Which is exactly what we did. Played cards and rested in the morning, then in the afternoon we went and took the girls for a walk. Luisa didn’t want to go, but her mother and father needed time to get ready for tomorrow’s big day, so she was strapped into the stroller.

We walked down Via Giuseppe Verdi to Palazzo Madama with Luisa calling for her mother to rescue her all the way. We stopped at a bench near Palazzo Madama and did our best to clam her down. Sweet Amadea managed to sleep though the whole thing. We told Luisa we were walk home now. Mary hinted we take the long way, so we walked slowly through the piazza Castello, past Torre Littoria, down Via Giovanni Battista Viotti, and then left on Via Monte di Pietà, to Via Roma. Down Via Roma to Piazza San Carlo, then found a bench on the far side of the piazza and gave Amadea a bottle. The back up Via Roma towards Piazza Castello, turn left and walk down Via Po, and the left again down Via Sant’Ottavio and right on Via Giuseppe Verdi and back to Serra’s.

Torre Littoria is one my my favorite buildings in Torino because of its history. It was the first high-rise building in Torino, and one of the most renowned rationalist buildings in Italy. Torre Littoria was built in 1933–34, with the intent of hosting, among other offices, the national headquarters of the National Fascist Party; in fact, it never did, with the party's headquarters located first in Milan and then in Rome. Instead, it became wholly owned by Reale Mutua Assicurazioni (Royal Mutual Insurance), an insurance company that already financed almost all of its costs and is still the owner of the entire property.

The building is a prominent example of early 20th-century Italian rationalist architecture, notable for its widespread use of innovative materials such as glass brick, clinker brick and linoleum, and is also the first Italian building with a welded metal structural frame.

The building occupies a little more than two-thirds of a city block, consisting of a 9-story low-rise section, and a 19-story high-rise section reaching 87 meters at its roof, upon which rises an antenna tower, giving the building a total height of 109 meters; until 1940 it was the tallest continuously habitable building in Italy. During World War II one of the 58 air raid sirens of Torino were mounted on its roof, and the building sustained minor damage during the bombing of 13 July 1943.

We stayed awhile at Serra’s and then walked home.

Buonanotte e Ciao, Enrico e Maria