The Mole Antonelliana is the symbol of Turin, it is on the two-cent coin and it is 167.5 metres tall. And it is, in almost every detail, a building that never became the thing it was designed to be.
It was meant to be a synagogue and never was. It was meant to be forty-seven metres tall and it is a hundred and sixty-seven. Its architect died without seeing it finished. The spire you see today is not the original one. And inside, where there was supposed to be a prayer hall, people now lie back on red loungers watching films.
It is the story of a building site that ran away from everyone, and knowing how it went changes the way you look at it from the street.
The wrong client, or the wrong architect
In 1863 Turin’s Jewish community commissioned Alessandro Antonelli to build a synagogue. Emancipation had come in 1848 with the Statuto albertino, and for the first time a temple could be built in plain view rather than hidden away: it was a matter of civic dignity before it was a matter of architecture.
How do you get from forty-seven metres to a hundred and sixty-seven? The approved design was forty-seven metres. Antonelli asked to raise it and was allowed to, then raised it again, then again. By 1869 the building stood at seventy metres and the community had already spent more than twice the estimate, on a structure that kept growing and had no roof.
In 1873 the Jewish community gave up: it handed the unfinished building over to the city of Turin in exchange for another site, where it later built the synagogue in via Pio V, which is Turin’s synagogue. The city decided to turn it into a monument to national unity.
Antonelli carried on for another fifteen years. He died in October 1888, aged ninety, with the building almost finished; his son completed it in 1889, putting the winged genius on top and bringing the height to 167.35 metres.
Why it stands up
The question anyone asks looking at it close up: how does a thing like that hold, built in brick masonry in the nineteenth century.
Antonelli was working to a precise idea, one he had already tried out at Novara on the dome of San Gaudenzio: push masonry to the limit of what it can do, with very thin walls stiffened by a system of ribs and arches that channel the load onto a few points. It is not a solid building, it is a shell. Anyone climbing on foot through the cavity of the dome understands it physically: you walk inside the wall, between two skins of brick.
The limit was real, though. On 23 May 1953 a whirlwind over the city brought down forty-seven metres of the spire: the tip snapped and fell. The rebuild, between 1955 and 1960, remade the spire with a steel structure inside a cladding, because the masonry version could not be repeated. What you see at the top today is therefore steel dressed as stone.
What a cinema museum is doing inside
What is a cinema museum doing inside a synagogue that never was? The pairing looks accidental and is not. The National Museum of Cinema grew out of an idea of Maria Adriana Prolo, a historian and collector who from the late 1930s began gathering everything that survived of Turin’s silent cinema, that is, of an industry which in the early twentieth century had made Turin the Italian capital of film, before Rome took over.
The museum was founded in 1941, opened to the public in 1958 at Palazzo Chiablese and closed in 1983. It had no home for seventeen years. In July 2000 it reopened inside the Mole.
The display is by the Swiss designer François Confino, and it is what makes the difference between this museum and a collection of memorabilia. The route spirals up the building’s ramps and passes through themed chapels: small rooms, each devoted to a genre or an obsession of cinema, furnished as sets you walk into.
The Aula del Tempio, and the red loungers
At the centre of the building, where Antonelli had planned the prayer hall, there is a very tall void rising to the dome. Confino did not fill it: he left it empty and put about thirty red chaises longues in it, facing upwards, with two large tilted screens overhead.
You lie down and watch continuous projections. The first time it is disorienting, because it is not the posture you hold in a museum, and then it works: looking up you see the film and Antonelli’s dome above it at the same time, which is to say the two things this building has been.
It is also the point where the architecture explains itself. From there you take in the whole internal height at once, with the museum galleries running around it and the lift cables dropping through the middle like a fall of wires.
The panoramic lift
It rises through the central void in a glass cabin and reaches the tempietto at 85 metres. There is no cage around it: you watch the Aula del Tempio drop away beneath your feet, then the dome close in overhead.
Is the lift worth paying for separately? It is a separate ticket from the museum, and it is worth paying. The tempietto is a small balustraded balcony running round the base of the spire, and from there the view takes in the whole city, the hill, and the basilica of Superga on its hilltop, recognisable with the naked eye. If you are doing the two-day itinerary, this is the moment you see in advance where you are going that afternoon.
One operational detail that saves a disappointment: the lift makes its last descent from the tempietto ten minutes before closing, and the outside queue can be shut early and without warning to clear the people already in it. If it matters to you, do not arrive at the last minute.
Climbing the dome on foot, and when you cannot
There is a second way to reach the top that almost nobody knows about: the climb on foot, entirely up the stairs inside the cavity of the dome, from the ground floor to the panoramic terrace at 85 metres.
It comes in two forms, a guided visit on Saturday, Sunday and holidays at 10.20 am, 2 pm and 4.40 pm, and an accompanied visit you make on your own with staff supervision on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 2 pm. It has to be booked.
The museum explicitly advises against it for anyone with mobility difficulties, serious sight or hearing problems, heart or lung conditions, claustrophobia or balance disorders, and it is not allowed under the age of six.
Watch out for the constraint that catches people in summer: in the hot months the climb on foot is suspended, because of the temperatures inside the cavity. In 2026 the suspension began on 22 June. If this is what you want to do, check the museum’s website first, because it is not a service guaranteed all year.
Practical information
Checked on 2 September 2026 on the official website of the National Museum of Cinema. Prices and hours change: check again before you travel.
Tickets. The museum costs 18 euros full price and 16 reduced; the panoramic lift alone 9 and 7; the combined museum plus lift 23 and 20. The reduced rate applies to the 6 to 26 age band and, on the lift alone, also to the Torino+Piemonte Card, the Royal Pass and the Abbonamento Musei. Entry to the museum is free with the Abbonamento Musei and the Torino+Piemonte Card, under 5 and for ICOM members; it is also free for disabled visitors and one companion, with priority access on collecting the ticket at the desk.
Opening hours. Daily 9 am to 7 pm, closed on Tuesday. The ticket office closes an hour before and the last entry is an hour before. The lift makes its last descent from the tempietto ten minutes before closing.
Booking. The museum recommends it during the week and above all on Saturday, Sunday and holidays, buying online in advance. The queue for the lift at weekends is the main reason a visit of an hour and a half turns into one of two and a half.
Where. The museum entrance is at via Montebello 20, ten minutes on foot from piazza Castello.
How long it takes. The museum asks an hour and a half, two if you stop in the themed chapels. The lift adds between twenty minutes and an hour, depending on the queue. The climb up the dome on foot, when it runs, is a good hour.
On affiliate links, for the sake of honesty. No resellers here: the museum sells online itself, and the official booking is also the only channel for the climb up the dome on foot.
Photo credits: the Mole from via Sant’Ottavio by Gunnar Klack, spire by Mongolo1984, 1884 view of Turin in the restored version uploaded by .mau., Aula del Tempio and themed chapel by Justinawind, dome interior by Caulfield and tempietto by Manuelarosi (CC BY-SA 4.0). All from Wikimedia Commons.
