Piazza San Carlo

Introduction

Piazza San Carlo stands at the centre of Turin's old town, with Via Roma running straight through it, and is the largest Baroque square in Piedmont, long known as Turin's drawing room. Rectangular and some 168 by 76 metres, about 12,700 square metres in all, it was laid out by Carlo di Castellamonte in the mid-seventeenth century and later revised by Benedetto Alfieri, with continuous arcades on all four sides. The space marked the point where the Savoy capital pushed south to open Via Roma, and under French rule it served as a parade ground renamed Place Napoleon. At its centre stands Carlo Marochetti's 1838 bronze equestrian monument to the Savoy duke Emanuele Filiberto, shown sheathing his sword after the Battle of San Quentin as a gesture of peace; Turinese call it Caval 'd Brons, the bronze horse, and it is among Italy's oldest equestrian monuments. At the south end, facing each other across Via Roma, stand two near-identical Baroque churches: San Carlo, begun in 1619 with a facade completed in 1834, and Santa Cristina, commissioned by the regent Christine Marie in 1639 with a facade by Filippo Juvarra between 1715 and 1718. The Galleria Subalpina sits at the north-west corner, and small frescoes of the Holy Shroud still show on the facades at the street corners. Through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the square's cafes hosted political and literary figures such as Camillo Benso di Cavour and Giovanni Giolitti; Caffè San Carlo, Caffè Torino, opened in 1903, and the Pasticceria Stratta, founded in 1836, still set the tone of daily life. The square also carries the 2006 Winter Olympics marker and is a gathering place for Juventus fans; on the evening of the 3 June 2017 Champions League final a serious crush occurred here.

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