Cittadella di Torino: Savoyard Fortress and Underground Defense System
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.3
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Savoy
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Fort
On this page14 sections
History
Cittadella di Torino is a Savoyard pentagonal fortress in Turin, Italy, built in the sixteenth century in the early-modern bastioned style. Constructed between 1564 and 1577, it replaced the Bastion of San Pietro and became a central part of the duchy’s plans to strengthen Turin after Duke Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy moved the capital from Chambéry to the city.
Foundation and construction
The fortress stood on the southwestern side of Turin, outside the ancient Roman city walls. Its construction followed the French occupation of the city, when the Bastion of San Pietro had been built around 1536. The foundation stone was laid in 1564, and the work was completed in 1577.
Francesco Horologi produced the initial design but could not execute the project, which he transferred to the Savoyard duke. Francesco Paciotto of Urbino then revised the plans. About 2,000 workers carried out the construction under General Nicolis di Robilant, who specialized in underground defenses. The fortress required the demolition of an entire neighborhood and the Church of the Holy Martyrs. A popular tradition holds that Roman columns, inscriptions, statues, and fragments of other ancient monuments were incorporated into the walls, although this remains a legend rather than an established fact.
Sieges and military importance
Turin was besieged in 1640 during the Franco-Spanish War, a conflict in which France and Spain competed for influence in the Italian states. Christina of France, regent of Savoy-Piedmont, held the Cittadella with French assistance against pro-Spanish forces commanded by her brother, Thomas Francis of Savoy. A French army led by the Count of Harcourt eventually relieved the fortress.
The Cittadella became a principal symbol of Savoyard resistance during the War of the Spanish Succession, the European conflict fought mainly from 1701 to 1714 over the Spanish throne. Turin, allied with the Savoyard side, became a major objective. In 1706, the army of Louis XIV conducted the Franco-Spanish siege of the city, while the fortress’s reinforced underground defenses were used by Piedmontese mining soldiers to detect enemy tunnels and destroy attacking positions.
During the night of 29 to 30 August 1706, Pietro Micca, a Piedmontese soldier and military miner from the Biella area, detonated about 20 kilograms of gunpowder. The explosion collapsed a gallery and stopped the enemy from advancing through the underground defenses. Micca’s action made him a lasting figure in the history of the siege and of the fortress.
Occupation, political conflict, and decline
In spring 1799, the Mastio briefly held Pope Pius VI while he was being taken to France. He had been condemned to exile after the anticlerical violence that followed the French Revolution. During the French occupation of Turin from 1800 to 1814, many of the city’s walls and bastions were demolished. The Cittadella was spared because the quality of its design was recognized, and it had also survived the earlier dismantling of the city walls around 1800.
On 12 March 1821, Carbonari officers attacked the Cittadella during the Piedmontese liberal uprising. The Carbonari belonged to secret liberal and nationalist societies whose members sought constitutional and national political change while opposing Austrian influence in Italy. That night, Victor Emmanuel I abdicated in favor of his brother Charles Felix. With Austrian military support, Charles Felix defeated the insurgents.
Advances in siege warfare during the nineteenth century eventually made the fortress obsolete. After losing its defensive function, the Cittadella was reduced to use as a barracks, and the complete demolition of the fortress was decided in 1856. The Mastio was retained and became a state prison of Savoy. Pietro Giannone, a Neapolitan historian persecuted by the Church and arrested on the orders of Charles Emmanuel III, died there in 1748.
In 1815, during the Napoleonic wars in Piedmont, Captain Jakob Lenk von Wolfsberg of the imperial and royal army received the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus from the king for the exemplary surrender of the Cittadella after securing its movable military equipment. In 1864, a marble statue of Pietro Micca by Giuseppe Cassano was erected in front of the Mastio gardens, toward the intersection of Corso Galileo Ferraris and Via Cernaia.
Survival and conservation
The surviving Mastio now houses the National Historical Artillery Museum, while the underground galleries form part of the Pietro Micca Museum and the Museum of the Siege of Turin of 1706. The Mastio has undergone conservation and restoration work, and the galleries remain part of the Pietro Micca Museum complex.
Modern construction has also affected the preservation of the underground remains. During metro construction in 2001, sandbags temporarily protected the galleries from vibrations produced by the tunneling machine. They were removed after the excavation ended. A project for an underground car park beneath Corso Galileo Ferraris began in 2015 but was suspended after ancient remains were discovered. A committee was then established to preserve the area as a permanent museum complex.
Remains
The original Cittadella was a regular pentagon with powerful bastions at its five corners. The fortress initially occupied more than 20 hectares, later expanding to approximately 40 hectares as its outer defenses spread. A broad, waterless moat surrounded it. The ground drained too quickly for the moat to retain water, while the surrounding defensive works were arranged to stop attackers from reaching the city’s limits.
Above-ground structures and memorials
The Mastio
The Mastio, the former two-storey entrance building, is the only surviving above-ground structure of the original fortress. It is not a medieval keep but the principal remnant of the early-modern entrance complex. The building houses the National Historical Artillery Museum, linking the surviving fabric of the fortress with the military history preserved inside it.
Santa Barbara and commemorative features
The church of Santa Barbara stands within the former fortress area and contains the tomb of Count Pietro de la Roche d’Allery, who commanded the Cittadella during the 1706 siege. A plaque beside the Mastio entrance commemorates Waldensians from the surrounding valleys who were executed in the area in 1535.
The marble monument to Pietro Micca stands in front of the Mastio gardens. It was created by Giuseppe Cassano and erected in 1864, commemorating the soldier and military miner whose destruction of a gallery helped block the 1706 attack.
Underground defenses
Galleries and water supply
At the center of the fortress stood the Cisternone, a well fitted with a double spiral ramp that supplied water during a siege. From the fortress, an extensive underground defense system extended toward the countryside near the Bastion of Relief, an outer defensive work associated with protecting the fortress’s underground communications.
The main radial galleries, known as the high and low capitals, were arranged one above the other. A magistral gallery outside the moat connected the high capitals. Together, these passages created the principal framework of the fortress’s underground mine system.
Counter-mine passages
Secondary tunnels branched from the main galleries and covered a wide area. Short, low passages led to individual explosive chambers, or counter-mine galleries. Counter-mines were underground passages and chambers used to detect, intercept, or destroy enemy tunnels during a siege. The galleries of the Cittadella included these chambers for detonating charges, and they were used extensively during the 1706 siege.
The underground galleries are largely preserved and remain part of the museum complex dedicated to Pietro Micca and the siege of 1706. Their survival retains the physical organization of the fortress’s defensive mine system even though most of the pentagonal structure above ground was demolished.
Artillery remains
The Turkish Firearm
A large fifteenth-century bronze cannon known as the Turkish Firearm was placed in 1961 in the green area facing Corso Galileo Ferraris. It was moved inside the National Historical Artillery Museum in 2008, where it is preserved with the artillery collection associated with the surviving Mastio.
