Turin

Palazzo Madama is a palace in Rome that is currently the home of the Senate of the Italian Republic. It was built atop the ruins of the ancient baths... of Nero, next to Piazza Navona. The terrain had been acquired in the Middle Ages by the monks of the Abbey of Farfa, who later ceded it to France. The new building was begun at the end of the 15th century and completed in 1505, for the Medici family. It housed two Medici cardinals and cousins, Giovanni and Giuliano, who both later became popes as Leo X and Clement VII, respectively. Catherine de' Medici, Clement VII's niece, also lived here before she was married to Henry, son of King Francis I of France in 1533. As well as Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, patron of the artist Caravaggio, who died here. The palace takes its name from Madama Margherita of Austria, illegitimate daughter of Emperor Charles V, who married another illegitimate son, Alessandro de' Medici and, after his death, Ottavio Farnese. Thus part of the art collection of the Florentine Medici family was inherited by the Farnese family. The current façade was built in the mid 1650s by both Cigoli and Paolo Maruccelli.
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The Palatine Towers is an ancient Roman-medieval structure in Turin, Italy. The structure served as one of four Roman city gates, which allowed... access from north to the cardus maximus, the typical second main street of a Roman town. They are located near the Duomo di Torino and Palazzo Reale. In its current appearance, the building comprise two polygonal towers, of sixteen sides each, and a central gate. Only the latter is an original Roman structure, the towers having been added in the following years. The merlons are from 1404. The name Porta Palazzo comes from the Latin Porta Palatii , referring to the connected Imperial Palace, which housed numerous historical figures, including the Lombard kings and Charlemagne, and was later the seat of the communal authorities. During the early eighteenth-century period of urban reconstruction in Turin, the gate was preserved only through the personal intervention of architect Antonio Bertola. It was one of the few ancient landmarks to be saved from destruction.
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Royal Palace of Turin or Palazzo Reale, is a palace in Turin, northern Italy. It was the royal palace of the House of Savoy. It was modernised... greatly by the French born Madama Reale Christine Marie of France in the 17th century. The palace was worked on by Filippo Juvarra. It includes the Palazzo Chiablese. In the reign of Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy , the site was once part of an old Bishops palace in the center of the new capital of Savoy, Turin. From this palace, the Duke was able to monitor the two entrances of the city - the Palatine and Pretoria gates. The old palace in Turin was thus abandoned and had previously been the residence of the French Viceroys of Savoy who were appointed by Francis I of France having captured Savoy 1536. Opposite the bishops palace was the Palazzo Vecchio or the Palazzo di San Giovanni. These would later be swallowed up by the grander Ducal Palace. The old Bishops Palace thus became the seat of power and was greatly expanded by Emmanuel Philibert in order to house his ever expanding collections of art, animals, marbles and furniture.
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The Mole Antonelliana is a major landmark building in Turin, Italy. It is named for the architect who built it, Alessandro Antonelli. A mole is a... building of monumental proportions. Construction began in 1863, soon after Italian unification, and was completed in 1889, after the architect's death. Originally conceived of as a synagogue, it now houses the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, and is the tallest museum in the world. The building was conceived and constructed as a synagogue. The Jewish community of Turin had enjoyed full civil rights since 1848, and at the time the construction of the synagogue began, Turin was the capital of the new Italian state, a position it held only from 1860 to 1864. The community, with a budget of 250,000 lire and the intention of having a building worthy of a capital city, hired Antonio Antonelli. Antonelli had recently added a 121 metre-high dome and spire to the seventeenth-century Basilica of San Gaudenzio in Novara and promised to build a synagogue for 280,000 lire. The relationship between Antonelli and the Jewish community was not happy.
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The Turin Museum of Natural History was established in 1978 to house the natural history collections of the University of Turin and other... collections of naturali history, originated from specific research campaigns and donations. It is located at 36 Via Giolitti, Turin, in a 17th century building which used to be the hospital of San Giovanni Battista. The museum has departments of zoology, entomology, botany, minerals, geology and paleontology. It also has a specialist library and an exhibition centre.
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The Palazzo Carignano is a historical building in the centre of Turin, Italy, which currently houses the Museum of the Risorgimento. It was once a... private residence of the Princes of Carignano, after whom it is named. It is famous for its unique rounded façade. It is located on the Via Accademia delle Scienze. The construction of the Palazzo Carignano was ordered by Emmanuel Philibert, son of Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano and his French wife Marie de Bourbon. Construction started in 1679 when the Prince was 51 years of age. The Prince commissioned the native Savoyard architect Guarino Guarini to design a suitable residence for the cadet house of the reigning House of Savoy. Guarini designed a vast structure in the shape of a square; he had a straight and restrained east facade created and a lavish and very unusual elliptical tower, slightly is withdrawn in facade, on the west. Guarini also added a large forecourt at the centre of the palace. The decorations over the windows of the piano nobile recall the campaign of the Carignano family with Carignan-Salières Regiment against the Iroquois in 1667. The interior has always been described as lavish.
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The Turin City Museum of Ancient Art is a museum located in the Palazzo Madama palace, in Turin, northern Italy. The museum has a rare collection of... artifacts from Gandhara, coming from the Italian excavations of the IsMEO at the Butkara Stupa in Pakistan.
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Enore Zaffiri is an Italian composer. He studied composition and pianoforte at Turin Music Conservatory and subsequently with Tony Aubin at the... "Conservatoire National" in Paris. He perfected his piano studies with Guido Agosti at the "Accademia Musicale Chigiana" in Sienna. From 1954 to 1982 he held the Chair of General Music Culture at Turin Conservatory. In 1964, he became lecturer on electronic music and founded SMET . Zaffiri’s first objective there was to overcome the historical elementary principles which coordinate the relationships between the sounds of traditional musical language for acoustic instruments and then concentrate his efforts on electronic means, searching for new sound perspectives originating from a structural principle based on the Euclidian plane geometrical figure by which means the various sound parameters can be coordinated and the formal and spatial dimension extracted. In 1965, together with other operators in the visual field, he set up the "Studio di Informazione Estetica" and started an interdisciplinary research into sound and visual phenomena. The main objective of this research was to generate the elements relevant to the sound and visual fields from a single basic structure. The extreme limit of the formal rigorism was achieved in 1968 with the project "Musica per un anno," the purpose of which was the sonorization of environments. From 1970, Zaffiri turned his attention to the live performance of electronic music. He combined electronic sound with the human voice as in "Il giuoco dell’oca" which is inspired by the E. Sanguineti's novel, and in "Raptus," a composition based on a text by M. Châtel. In that period, the first scores for synthesizers appeared and the live performance of pieces specifically written for this instrument began. At the end of the seventies he extended his research into visuals to the video, maintaining the interdisciplinary process by using the instruments that technology offered and which represented, for the author, the means and support for what he intended to express. At the end of the eighties he produced the video "L’arte nella Storia" published by Cooperativa Books and Video in Turin.
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Francesco Tamagno was an operatic tenor from Italy who sang with enormous success throughout Europe and America. On 5 February 1887, he cemented his... place in musical history by creating the role of Otello in Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece of the same name. He is also the earliest Italian tenor to have left a sizeable body of recordings of his voice. The most famous heroic tenor of his age, Tamagno performed in a total of 26 countries, garnering renown for the extreme power of his singing, especially in the upper register. Indeed, music critics often likened the sound of his voice to that of a trumpet or even a cannon. Tamagno's vocal range extended effortlessly up to a resounding high C-sharp during his prime, but he was no mere 'belter' of high notes; for his recordings provide evidence of his ability, even at career's end, to sing softly when required, modulating the dynamic levels of his clarion instrument with remarkable skill and unexpected sensitivity.
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Alessandro Baricco is a popular Italian writer, director and performer. His novels have been translated into a wide number of languages. He... currently lives in Rome with his wife and two sons. After receiving degrees in philosophy and piano, he published essays on music criticism: Il genio in fuga on Gioachino Rossini, and L'anima di Hegel e le mucche del Wisconsin on the relation between music and modernity. He subsequently worked as musical critic for La Repubblica and La Stampa, and hosted talk shows on Rai Tre. Baricco debuted as a novelist with Castelli di rabbia in 1991. In 1993 he co-founded a creative writing school in Turin, naming it Scuola Holden after J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield. The Scuola Holden hosts a variety of courses on narrative techniques including screenwriting, journalism, videogames, novels and short stories. In the following years his fame grew enormously throughout Europe, with his works topping the Italian and French best-seller lists.
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Frankie HI-NRG MC, born Francesco Di Gesù , is an Italian rapper of Sicilian origins. Frankie HI-NRG has been active since the early stages of... the Italian hip hop movement in the early 1990s, and predominantly discusses Politics and Society in his music.
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Salvatore Accardo is an Italian violinist and conductor. He is particularly noted for his interpretations of Paganini, J. S. Bach, Antonio Vivaldi,... contemporary works, chamber music, and opera conducting. Accardo studied violin in the southern Italian city of Naples in the 1950s. He gave his first professional recital at the age of 13 performing Paganini's Capricci. In 1956 Accardo won the Geneva Competition and in 1958 became the first prize winner of the Paganini Competition in Genoa. He has recorded Paganini's 24 Caprices for solo violin and was the first violinist to record all six of the violin concerti by Paganini . He has an extensive discography of almost 50 recordings on Philips, DG, EMI, Sony Classical, Foné, Dynamic, and Warner-Fonit. Notably, he has recorded an album of classical and contemporary works in 1995 on Paganini's Guarneri del Gesù 1742 violin, the "Canon". Accardo founded the Accardo Quartet in 1992 and he was one of the founders of the Walter Stauffer Academy in 1986.
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Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, also spelled Bruni-Tedeschi, is an Italian-French actress. Bruni Tedeschi was born in Turin, in the Piedmont region of... Italy. Like her younger sister, Carla Bruni, she has settled in France, and was raised bilingual by her Italian parents. She holds dual Italian and French citizenship. Her brother-in-law, Nicolas Sarkozy, is the former President of France and stepped down on 15th May 2012 after being defeated in the Presidential Elections by François Hollande. Bruni Tedeschi is in a relationship with Louis Garrel. She adopted an African baby 2009. Bruni Tedeschi has acted in many films since 1986, and has recently been a leading member of the cast in several internationally acclaimed films, such as She was present at the 2005 Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, to promote two films she had acted in: Tickets , a three-segment film directed by Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami, and Ken Loach, and Crustacés et Coquillages, a comedy directed by the French duo of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau.
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Gaetano Pugnani was born in Turin. He trained on the violin under Giovanni Battista Somis and Giuseppe Tartini. In 1752, Pugnani became the first... violinist of the Royal Chapel in Turin. Then he went on a large tour that granted him great fame for his extraordinary skill on the violin. In 1754, he was very well received at the Concert Spirituel in Paris, but in 1768 he had an even more successful musical encounter in London, directing the King's Theatre from 1767 to 1769. In 1770, Pugnani returned home to Turin and became the director of the Royal Chapel. His fame as a composer began to grow, but it would never equal his fame as a violinist. During this time, he also taught the violin. His most famous pupil was Giovanni Battista Viotti; from 1780 to 1782 they performed in Switzerland, Dresden, Warsaw and St. Petersburg. Pugnani died in Turin. Fritz Kreisler borrowed Pugnani's name in order to publish some of his pieces , but in 1935 Kreisler revealed that these works were actually his own.
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