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Italia '61

Italia '61 was the exhibition organized in Turin for the centenary of Italian Unification, open from 1 May to 31 October 1961 in the area south of the Lingotto along the Po, where the Italia '61 park now stands.[1] Sources disagree on attendance: nearly five million visitors according to MuseoTorino, over one million according to the Turin Civic Libraries.[1][2]

Organization

The city committee was formed in 1957 and had about two hundred members; the State allocated 8 billion 880 million lire, with a substantial contribution from the City.[1] For the occasion, Palazzo Carignano and the Palazzina di Stupinigi were restored, and the Pietro Micca Museum opened.[1] Architects such as Levi Montalcini, Sottsass, Gabetti and Isola, Nervi and Rigotti worked on the project.[1]

The exhibitions

The exhibition included the Historical Exhibition of Unification at Palazzo Carignano, the Exhibition of the Regions and the International Labour Exhibition, as well as Flor '61 and an amusement park.[1] The Regions exhibit featured nineteen pavilions arranged to evoke the shape of the peninsula, plus a large unified Pavilion; the Campus ONU now stands on the site of the Exhibition of the Regions.[2][4] The labour exhibition was housed in Pier Luigi Nervi's Palazzo del Lavoro, which hosted twenty-three nations.[4]

The Palazzo a Vela, built in 1959–1961 to a design by Annibale and Giorgio Rigotti with engineers Franco Levi and Nicolas Esquillan, covers a circular hall 130 metres in diameter with a prestressed reinforced-concrete dome resting on three points.[5] FIAT offered the public the Circarama, a 360-degree circular-screen cinema patented by Walt Disney: a hall 32 metres in diameter with a screen 90 metres by 7, nine projectors and room for about a thousand standing spectators, where the film «Italia 1961», produced by Walt Disney Productions for FIAT, was shown.[6] Among the curiosities were Italy's first self-service restaurant and an illuminated fountain on the Po.[4]

Transport

An Alweg monorail connected the two main entrances on pylons about six metres high: 1,200 metres in a minute and a half, with a capacity of 25,000 passengers a day; the train, German-built with Ghia bodywork, had 80 seats and room for 120 standing passengers.[2][3][4] A cable car with 61 cabins climbed 900 metres towards the Parco Europa in Cavoretto, and diesel boats sailed on the Po.[3][1]

What remains

The monorail remained in service until 1969; on 18 December 1979 an arson attack destroyed the train car parked at the Corso Unità d'Italia station.[4] Some pylons survive near the park's small lake, while the cable car stations are abandoned and a nursery school now stands on the site of the Circarama.[3][7] From 18 September to 22 November 2026, the exhibition «Bentornata, Italia '61!» at the Spazio Giubileo Incontri on Corso Bramante recalls the exhibition.[8]

Related articles: Palazzo a Vela, Palazzo del Lavoro

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  • — The Allianz Stadium in Turin will host, on 7 November, the rugby match between Italy and South Africa, the first home game of the new international Nations Championship competition and the third international rugby test hosted by the venue in fifteen years. → TorinoClick TorinoOggi

Sources

  1. MuseoTorino
  2. Biblioteche civiche torinesi
  3. Torino Oggi — 17 August 2023
  4. Torino Oggi — 20 September 2026
  5. MuseoTorino
  6. MuseoTorino
  7. MuseoTorino
  8. Torino Oggi — 15 September 2026

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