1. The new Mother House (1905 - 1909)
"Away, away, that round stone; Who has ever seen such stones used in construction? Those bricks are too dry, go, bring bricks that refuse the water. Dora sand in the plasters! Not even for a dream: I want Stura sand, and not this one that will bring out stains when we move on to painting».
The one who speaks like this is, according to Father Giuseppe Gallea, Canon Giacomo Camisassa, who "when he comes to visit the construction of the new Mother House (and there is no way that there is only one day left) he goes to find one by one all the mischief committed by the master masons during the day. He knows everything, he knows everything, as if he had done nothing else in his life. With him, no one can say to "leave it to those who are in the trade" because "the canon knows the job more than wedo".
This lively page of Father Gallea interprets very well the intentions of Camisassa, and of course of Allamano. In committing himself to building the new Mother House, Camisassa aimed to do everything well, because Allamano constantly repeated that good must be done well, that the new Mother House must be built as it should be; to the point that, «observing that the building already built will be used as a college for the instruction of young people, to whom it is necessary to impart the teaching of natural sciences, astronomy and metheology, etc., and that for this purpose it is not only useful but indispensable to have an observatory for observations», Allamano and Camisassa asked the mayor of Turin, Senator Count Secondo Frola, to build it "on the central top of the building in accordance with the drawing annexII".
Also an observatory, therefore, for the scientific preparation of the students who would be destined for missionary life, and not only, as Camisassa wanted, the good sand of the Stura di Lanzo, the eight columns of red granite from Baveno, purchased at the price of 175 lire per cubic meter, and the renowned Luserna stone for sidewalks and plinth. The house was supplied with drinking water at the rate of 300 cubic meters per semesteriii. Therefore, the Mother House had to be well built and be useful and responsive to what Allamano and Camisassa set themselves; but they were also careful not to exceed the costs. A previous initial project, attributed to the engineer Antonio Vandone di Cortemiglia, had been discarded in practice, perhaps "because it was too elaborate and therefore too expensiveiv".
The deed of purchase of the land for the new Mother House, by deed of the notary Stefano Ruella, is by the November 10, 1905. At the deed, in addition to the owner of the land, Leone Sacerdote of the late Cavalier Emanuel, born in Chieri, who represented the Sacerdote Cavalier Emanuel Company of the late Salvador, were naturally also present the buyers or "buyers", namely Canon Giuseppe Allamano, Canon Giacomo Camisassa and the theologian Filippo Perlo of Caramagna Piemonte. Leone, the owner, was co-owner of the real estate company, that is, of the Priest Company, and was a Jew or an Israelite. The land was part of the Cascina Porporata, had an area of 11 thousand and 749 square meters and had been bought for the sum of 72 thousand lire. Located on the edge of Turin at the time, outside the French Wall, the land was "campivo", that is, cultivable. As coherence the city had for the part of the road of Circonvallazione, the axis of via Coazze, the axis of via Bruino and the axis of the extension of corso Oporto, which in the interior of the city partly took the name of via Cavalliv, the artillery general Giovanni Carlo Cavalli (1808-1879), who had participated in the wars of the Risorgimento, distinguishing himself for skill and courage, and who was later appointed commander of the Military Academy of Turin and senator of the Kingdom. The application for a building permit for the new construction was forwarded by Allamano to the Municipal Council on 17 April 1906 and, having seen the building, police and hygiene regulations in force, it was approved on 27 August of the same yearvi.
The first map depicting the Mother House indicates its existence in the Barriera di Francia, near the square where one of the offices for the payment of the duty was located, the current Piazza Bernini. It was therefore located on the edge of the city, in Via della Circonvallazione, at numbers 514-516, a sign that that peripheral street extended beyond Piazza Bernini, that is, it was longer than the current Corso Ferrucci. The house was also located between Via Bruino and Via Coazze, two towns in the Sangone Valley west of Turin.
Later, on October 22, 1915, in the climate of patriotic exaltation that preceded the First World War, Via della Circonvallazione was dedicated to Francesco Ferrucci (1489-1530), defender of the Republic of Florence against the troops of Emperor Charles V, who was wounded in the battle of Gavinana (August 3, 1530), was stabbed in the throat by the imperial captain Fabrizio Maramaldo, to whom, dying, he would have said: "You give to a dead man". For this fact he was considered a hero of the homeland, which he defended until his death. Even Corso Oporto, the street south of the block that at the beginning of the century extended to today's Corso Castelfidardo, too Carloalbertine in name, because it recalled the defeat of Carlo Alberto in Novara and his voluntary exile in Oporto in Portugal, by resolution of the Municipal Council of 3 July 1912 took the name of Via Cialdini, General Enrico Cialdini, who participated in the Crimean War of 1855 and those of the Risorgimento, was then elected a member of Parliament, where he had a bitter contrast with Garibaldi, and was later appointed ambassador to Madrid and Paris.
In this historical-Risorgimento quadrilateral, to the south and close to the ancient road of France, the Mother House was located. "The area of Corso Francia was chosen," writes Father Gallea, "because it was healthier, in a location just outside the city's customs walls, served by one of the few tram lines of the time, which had the advantage of having stops close to the Consolata (the Sanctuary) and the building under construction... At that time, the possibility of building the house of the Missionary Sisters on the same land was not foreseen: therefore the building with its courtyards occupied the center of the area, leaving at the two ends, north and south, two plots of about 2000 square meters each, which for some years were used for fruit and vegetable cropsvii».
The purchase of the land for the construction of the house had cost, again according to Father Gallea, about 100,000 lire and the construction about 400,000: therefore a total of 500,000 lireVIII. However, according to what was written by the engineer Enrico Buffoni, to whom we owe the final design of the house, the cost of the building exceeded 350 thousand lire. On the basis of this figure he demanded a percentage of three percent. But, out of deference to Allamano and Camisassa, he had limited his request to three per cent out of 250,000 lire, or 7,500 lire, later reduced to 6,000, which, however, Camisassa disputed because the figure seemed to him excessiveix. Once the construction work was finished, the Faja Company still had 17,678.38 lire to pay, as Allamano wrote in March 1911 to Camisassa, who was in Kenyax.
It is not at all easy to get an idea of the capital invested in buying the land and building the house. The values in lira of that time are not at all those of today, which, as we all know, after so many inflations and devaluations, have risen almost infinitely. On the basis of the cost of living in recent years, i.e. according to the figures provided by the 2006 FOI index (ISTAT), the 72 thousand lire, with which the land was bought in 1905, correspond to 509 million and 786,604 lire, equal to 262,973.67 euros; the 161 lire due to the notary at 1 million 139,939 lire and 566.42 euros; the 350 thousand, but certainly more, that is, what the construction had cost, are instead equal to 2 billion 619 million 736 thousand 715 lire and 1 million 350 thousand 350.57 euros; finally, in addition to other expenses, the sum of 17,678.38 lire, which still had to be paid to the Faja Company in 1911, corresponds today to 125 million 166 thousand 772 lire and 64 thousand 643.24 euros.
A total of 1 million 677 thousand 533.70 euros, a respectable figure of a certain importance, which perhaps, however, then, in 1909, were less frightening than today, revalued according to the ISTAT index, sound to our ears. A figure that, however, could further rise on the real estate market, if we consider the topographical position of the house, located along a major city course, which joins the courses Francia and Vittorio Emanuele II, and the fact that it is just over a kilometer from the so-called spine, the great road artery that runs from north to south of the city, and the new Porta Susa station and, again, the fact that it is very close to the new Palace of Justice, the subway and buses and trams that connect it directly with the city center and the various suburbs.
2. Turin between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
At this point, however, it is inevitable and important to ask ourselves in what context the new
When was the Mother House built, what was the historical setting, what were the socio-cultural ferments of Turin between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, what were the difficulties that such a project could have encountered and, last but not least, how to find the money necessary to implement it? Not only did Allamano and Camisassa have to ask themselves similar questions, but the city of Turin itself could have and create difficulties in granting the necessary permits for construction.
A serious financial crisis in the 1880s and 1890s had hit the city following the failure of some banks due to unbridled building speculation, which had involved the cities of Rome and Naples. The instability and bankruptcies stopped every initiative for a few years, but when the storm passed, the city resumed its industrial and building expansion begun a few years earlier along the great road of France, Corso Siccardi and Via Nizza.
A map of the territory of Turin, published by the Sardinian General Staff in 1854, describes a large part of the peripheral territory of the city characterized by large cultivated spaces, especially the area located west of Porta Susa, in the direction of the Susa valley, along the current Corso Francia, scattered with farmhouses that normally bore the name of their ownerxi. This vast territory, almost completely uninhabited, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries offered the city the opportunity to expand its traditional boundaries for the creation of factories and industries and for the industrial and commercial spirit that animated its inhabitants, for the consequent immigration from the countryside to the city and for the considerable increase in population.
The increase in population, attracted by industries that produced considerable wealth, had soon made the need for new building constructions felt. On the edge of the city there were new villages, such as the villages of Vanchiglia and Dora, those of Borgo Vittoria and Borgo San Paolo, villages that from the mid-nineteenth century onwards grew more and more in a disorganized and sometimes chaotic way. Regular and grandiose buildings stood on the two sides of Piazza Carlo Felice and Porta Nuova Station, along Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Corso Vinzaglio, full of arcades and villas of various designs and constructions. The city thus took on the appearance of a large metropolis with straight and checkerboard courses and streets, which crossed at right angles and extended into the peripheral areas.
Turin was one of the few Italian cities that already boasted metallurgical and mechanical industries at the end of the nineteenth century. These industries, which in 1890 employed a workforce of almost 9,000 workers, including military and railway workers, in 1910 employed about 30,000 workers. Above all, the automobile factories stood out: Lancia, Itala, Spa, Rapid and of course Fiat, founded in June 1899 with a modest capital of 800,000 lire and about fifty workers, but which already about twenty years later had a capital of 100 million lire fully paid up and a workforce of 38 thousand people.
Immigration from outside and the inevitable expansion of the city had a huge impact on the construction industry. Outside the customs walls, which ran around the baroque city for a perimeter of 32 kilometers, approved in 1853 and eliminated only in 1908, the workers' villages multiplied. The population of these villages grew more than the urban one. In 1901 85 percent of the 320,000 inhabitants of Turin were located within the customs walls; By 1911, ten years later, that figure had fallen to 72 percent out of a population of 428,000. This demographic trend was stimulated, especially in the areas of industrial settlements, by immigration, which still in the 191112 years, shortly before the World War, came mainly from Piedmont and especially from the province of Turin.
The rapid increase in population took place especially in the western part of the Turin area, along the axis of Corso Francia (the area that interests us most), where in a few years, in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century, the workers' settlements multiplied. This is documented by the opening of new parish churches to worship. In Borgo San
Donato, in the place where a road that led from Turin to Pellerina and Collegno passed since the Middle Ages, the church of the Immaculate Conception was built, completed in 1884. Not long after, in Borgo Vittoria, the construction of the parish church of the Madonna della Salute began, inaugurated in 1890, on the site where the last episode of the battle of Turin against the French took place in 1706. That area, crossed by the Geronda canal, was almost uninhabited in 1700. Later, once the canal was covered, prospects for industrial development began to take shape with consequent immigration from the countryside and the need for housing.
This was followed, closer to our Mother House, by the parish churches of Sant'Alfonso in the Campidoglio hamlet (1893), that of the Holy Angels in the district of the former Piazza d'Armi (1884-88), that of San Bernardino di Siena in Borgo San Paolo (1906-1915). On the other hand, the churches of San Pellegrino Laziosi, Saints Bernard and Bridget di Lucento, Madonna di Campagna and, later, in the Cit Turin district, between 1905 and 1913, that of Jesus of Nazareth, consecrated in 1930xii, belonged to religious congregations.
By going to live outside the customs walls, the workers sought cheaper prices for taxed consumer goods, housing with lower rents and possibly close to the workplace. It happened, however, that these villages with a working-class population, separated from the center and from each other by large expanses of countryside, remained physically and socially isolated. In this way, a new solidarity was born, which had a strong reference in territorial belonging and physical proximity between families.
The growth of the workers' villages did not lead to a general improvement in housing conditions. It has been observed that, although the construction industry had taken a great impulse from the years 1898-99, the construction of new houses took place to a greater extent outside the customs walls, so that the workers, who went to settle in large numbers, found themselves living in a state of excessive crowding and without any hygienic control. In fact, in 1901 just under 12,000 of the families surveyed in the suburban area, about 5,000 occupied a single room in mostly small houses, with factories mixed with the houses or isolated. All surrounded by fields and meadows. Few roads, dusty and muddy. The water and gas networks limited to major roads. Public services, such as trams, sewers, bathrooms, public washhouses and post offices, are absent; Shops are scarce and poorly stockedXIII.
However, animated by the industrial spirit, the city, in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, experienced a very lively and rich economic and cultural period. The conditions of the road network and public and private lighting improved. The city was provided with drinking water and sewage. Direct communications to France, with the completion of the Fréjus Tunnel in 1871, ensured Turin a providential outlet for its industrial and agri-food products. Markets and schools, boarding schools and charitable works, printing establishments, such as the Unione Tipografica Torinese and Paravia, were built, and in Regio Parco the Manifattura Tabacchi, which employed 1434 workers. Private institutes and colleges, museums, theaters, including the Regio, the first of Turin's theaters, cultural and artistic associations and foundations, such as the Subalpine Historical Society and the Academy of Fine Arts, flourished.
Faced with the tumultuous and almost sudden development of the city, in 1860, the City Council appointed a "Commission to determine the names to be imposed on the new streets", that is, to name the streets created by the expansion of the city. In that year, in fact, 1860, a municipal document appeared containing the "New name of the streets and new numbering of the doors", which from then on were numbered starting from Piazza Castello, the even numbers on the right, the odd ones on the left. The topographical renewal of the mid-nineteenth century was considered a necessary celebratory moment of a city that had played the role of leader of national unity. Luigi Cibrario in his History of Turin wrote that these streets "will mark a new era for our homelandxiv".
As a consequence of the development of the city, in 1905 the Turin administrators were able to approve a financial operation that in a volume, published in 1909 on the administrative life of the Municipality, was summarized in these terms: «In the period 1893 - 1904 the territorial and demographic increase of the city followed hand in hand with the development of municipal public works: the population increased by about 50,000 inhabitants, the taxable income on buildings increased from 28,360,000 to 31,000,000 lire". All this program could be accomplished without increasing the municipal surtax by a penny, meaning that the Commune stood on a good footing, despite the increase in population and the problems that ensued from it xv.
Such industriousness took place within a socio-political climate that was certainly not the most favorable to the construction of a new religious house among the many already existing in Turin and its surroundings. The crisis of so-called conciliationism following the Syllabus of 1864, in which Pius IX condemned the "the main errors of our age", and the affirmation of an intransigent Catholic party, represented in Turin by the "Catholic Unity" of Don Giacomo Margotti, had provoked a strong anticlerical reaction both on the legislative level and on that of the press and newspapers, in particular the articles of the "Gazzetta del Popolo", directed by Giovanni Battista Bottero. This anti-clericalism of the Risorgimento matrix, which eroded the Christian faith and the prestige of the Church, would soon be married to the anti-clericalism of the socialist type, which in Turin had as its interpreter, from 1892 to 1918, the weekly "Grido del Popolo". The activity of the Masonic lodges, supported by eminent figures of politics and culture, was also fervent, and the danger of a government law of suppression of religious orders with the relative confiscation of goods was ventilated.
Turin was then defined as "a great barracks" for its orderly discipline, for its decent habits, for the presence of many soldiers, but also for its profitable and remunerative work, which in those years ensured it an uncommon prosperity. Proof of this, among others, are the many exhibitions, such as the Turin Exhibition of 1881, the memorable one of 1884, conceived as a celebration of industry and art and visited by just under three million people.
Manifestations of Turin's industriousness were also the Italian Workers' Exhibition of 1890 and that of Architecture in 1892, which were followed in 1898 by another Exhibition for the fiftieth anniversary of the Statute of Carlo Alberto, which included an exhibition of Sacred Art and a pavilion of the Catholic Missions. Another World Exhibition of Decorative Art was held in 1902 with a competition of one and a half million visitors. Finally, in 1911 the World Exhibition of Industry and Art was held for the first fiftieth anniversary of the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy and Rome as capital.
Turin was proud of all this. With good rhetoric, the writer Antonio Fogazzaro greeted her as follows: "Find in you, old Turin, the vanquished spirit of your best time; infuse it into this manufacturing, merchant, artist, idle Italy, which comes to you for profits, applause, honors, pleasures. It reminds you of your austere ancient custom, the civil life as upright as your ways, the duty performed by yours in every office and in the field, without pride or pride." Rhetoric yes, typical of the time, but revealing of an industrious Turin, to which King Umberto I on 10 May 1898 awarded the gold medal "to commemorate the civil and political merits of the Citizenship" and as an "act of gratitude and love on behalf of all Italiansxvi".
3. Housewarming (October 9, 1909)
In this socio-cultural and political context, the new Mother House of the Consolata Missionaries was built. It was not an easy undertaking because of the economic implications it entailed, but also and above all because of the socio-political and cultural implications of the early twentieth century. The house, designed since 1905, was inaugurated in October 1909. The possession of the first part of the building took place on 9 October. It was a Saturday dedicated to Saints Dionysius and his companions, martyred for the faith in Alexandria under the emperors Decius and Valerian, and they seemed to be a good omen for an Institute that was in its first steps, just eight years after its foundation in 1901, animated by a youthful missionary spirit, full of zeal and courage.
The monthly "La Consolata" of October 1909 reported on it with a meticulous description of the
Casa: «By erecting the new building – built with commendable commitment by the renowned Fratelli Faja Company, based on the design and direction of the talented engineer Cav. E. Buffoni – the various purposes for which it was to serve were taken into account. The building was intended first of all to be grandiose in the severe and simple elegance of its overall design, where no space is stolen by useless ornamentation».
The article continued by specifying the shape and layout of the new house: "The length of the façade front, 90 meters, facing east, is opportunely broken by three advanced bodies. There are 4 floors, in addition to the raised basement of 1.50 meters and made very healthy by a double cavity, compliant with the best rules of modern building... Air and light reign supreme everywhere, penetrating through the large windows into the spacious dormitories, classroom rooms, etc., and the office of the numerous windows is still completed by a general system of fans which, together with that of the radiators, especially in winter, will allow the air in the rooms to be kept pure at all times. Drinking water circulates through every part of the house, from the attics to the underground kitchens, the laundry room and the complete systems of bathrooms and showersxvii».
Such a meticulous and precise description, the same clear and elegant style, could only be by Canon Camisassa, who had presided over the whole construction. In fact, the one who had dedicated body and soul to it had been Canon Giacomo Camisassa. It was he, writes Father Lorenzo Sales, "who studied the design of the new headquarters and oversaw its execution. Every day, for several years, he was seen coming and going from the sanctuary of the Consolata to the factory under construction, climbing the bridges, becoming aware of the progress of the work, examining the material used, taking an interest in everything: from the water pipe to the gas pipe, from the frame of a window to a lock on a door"; everything to the point of not being well regarded by the workers and workers.
The result was therefore a solid and rational building, cared for by workers loyal to the Institute. Writing to Camisassa, Giovanni Caneparo, a carpenter who lived in Turin in Borgo San Donato, assured him that he intended "to do a job, as if the house were mine and I want them to say that in 100 years they will still say that the carpenter who made these windows worked in consciencexix".
Canon Camisassa wanted such people to build the Mother House. In his intentions it had to be a simple building in form, but solid and bright, well furnished and well distributed on the various floors and in the different rooms. This is how his article ended: "The whole building is divided into three absolutely separate sections, and intended respectively for clerics and priests, novices, and young collegiates; Each section has a large courtyard with a porch. Two minor buildings, then, on the line of the wall overlooking the Circonvallazione road, contain the parlors, the secretariat, the museum, etc., and in the middle of them – on the site marked by a cross (see engraving) – the external church will rise over time».
Our Founder, Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, speaking to his missionaries, as he used to do, that is, on Sunday, April 2, 1911, the day of monthly retreat, rejoiced in the order and regularity that the new house offered to the community, unlike the previous house that stood in the area of the parish of the Holy Angels, the so-called Consolatina in Corso Duca di Genova: "It's no longer like 2 or 3 years ago in the other house where we bumped into each other: here we are in a large room, and, once the hustle and bustle of the move has finally passed, everything has received its place... And that's very good, there's order, regularity, so that a stranger coming here, to see everything clean," where everyone knows what to do, "is welcome and feels at ease."
i G. Gallea, Istituto Missioni Consolata. Foundation and Early Developments, I, Preparation - The Foundation. Years: 1880 - 1909, Pro-manuscript, Turin 1972, p. 343. ii Almost a life... Lettere scritti e ricevi dal beato Giuseppe Allamano con testi e documenti coeva, V (1908-1911), edited by C. Bona, Edizioni Missioni Consolata, Rome 1995, p. 43.
- Quasi una vita , IV, p. 586 in note; V, pp. 496-497, note 16.
- Tubaldo, Giuseppe Allamano. Il suo tempo - la sua vita - la sua opera, III, 1903-1912, Edizioni Missioni Consolata, Turin 1984, p. 417; the various phases of construction are described on pp. 412-429.
- Almost a lifetime, IV, pp. 462-69. vi Almost a lifetime cit., IV, pp. 584-587.
VII Gallea, Institute cit., I, p. 302. VIII Gallea, Institute cit., I., pp. 311-12.
- Tubaldo, Giuseppe Allamano, III, pp. 417-422; Quasi una vita cit., V, pp. 369-71, 23 June 1910; 390-94, 26 July 1910; 396-97, 2 August 1910.
- Quasi una vita, V, pp. 498-99, 13 March 1911. xi Institute of Technical Architecture of the Polytechnic of Turin, Urban Form and Architecture in Baroque Turin, II, Maps and Regulations, Turin 1968, A, Map I, strips 2-4.
- Tuninetti, Organizzazione ecclesiastica e pratica religiosa, in Storia di Torino, 7, Da capitale politica a capitale industriale, edited by U. Levra, Einaudi, Torino 2001, pp. 226-230.
- L. Bravo, Vita quotidiano e tradizioni popolari, in Storia di Torino cit., 7, pp. 1042-43. xiv Memorie di pietra, Turin 1991, pp. 10-11, 14. xv Storia di Torino cit., 7, pp. 540-541. xvi G. Bragagnolo, E. Bettazzi, Torino nella storia del Piemonte e d'Italia, II, Da Emanuele Filiberto ai giorni nostri, Unione Tipografica Editrice Torinese, Torino 1919, pp. 1251-52.
xvii «La Consolata», n. 10, October 1909, pp. 160-61. xviii L. Sales, The Servant of God Canon Giuseppe Allamano Founder of the Consolata Missions, third ed., Casale Monferrato 1944, p. 280. xix Tubaldo, Giuseppe Allamano cit., p. 416. On the figure of Giovanni Caneparo cf. Quasi una vita cit., II, pp. 68-69 in footnote; IV, p. 567, note 4. xx The "Spiritual Conferences" of the Servant of God Giuseppe Allamano, I, 1901-1913, Edizioni Missioni Consolata, Turin 1981, p. 390.