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Stazione di Porta Nuova

Turin's main railway station, a head-end building on piazza Carlo Felice built from 1861 to a design by Alessandro Mazzucchetti.

Porta Nuova station is Turin's main railway terminal: a large head-end building facing corso Vittorio Emanuele II, near piazza Carlo Felice.[1] According to its operator it is Italy's third-largest station, with about 192,000 passages a day, 70 million users a year and 350 trains daily.[2] Built in the years when Turin was still Italy's capital, for a century and a half it was the city's gateway: through it passed the survivors of the Nazi camps, the emigrants from the South and, today, the commuters of the metro.

From the city gate to the station

The name recalls the Porta Nuova, towards which the city had stretched in the nineteenth century with the building of today's piazza Carlo Felice, then called piazza del Re.[3] The passenger building was begun in 1861 to a design by engineer Alessandro Mazzucchetti, who sought to combine the function of a terminal with a monumental appearance.[2] Between 1865 and 1868 the Turin architect Carlo Ceppi also worked on the site; his biographer Luciano Tamburini describes the station as marked by an enormous arch on the façade, opened up by large windows.[4] That façade, with its great glazed arch, is still the building's face today.

A growing hub

For the 1911 international exhibition the station was substantially enlarged, to cope with the arriving visitors.[2] In 1937 the Enciclopedia Italiana described the terminal's role in the national rail network thus:

“At Torino Porta Nuova converge the great trunk lines coming from Milan (153 km; double track, steam), from Genoa (166 km; double track, electric) and from Bologna”

Enciclopedia Italiana, entry “Torino”, 1937

The same entry called Turin one of the most important rail hubs in Italy and in Europe.[3] In 1940 offices and postal services were improved, a large building was erected on via Nizza and the concourse was given a new reinforced-concrete roof, with a glazed inner façade; in 1951 the head-end hall was completed, 30 metres wide and 150 long, supported by 33 lattice trusses.[2] Over time two side halls were added alongside the head-end halls, running along the wings of the building.[1]

In sporting memory the station holds a curious place: Oreste Bolmida, a railwayman and stationmaster at Porta Nuova, would come into the Filadelfia with a State Railways bugle, and its call announced the “garnet quarter of an hour” of Grande Torino, when Valentino Mazzola rolled up his sleeves.[5]

Returns and arrivals

Primo Levi came back from Auschwitz through Porta Nuova. MuseoTorino, which reconstructs his city through his own writings, records his memory of the arrival: “The train put us off at Porta Nuova.”[6] The writer later returned to the station in a poem collected in At an Uncertain Hour, “Another Monday,” which divides humanity between hell and paradise and has judgement ring out from the loudspeakers of Porta Nuova, in the anguish of Monday morning.[6]

In the years of the economic boom the station became a symbol of internal migration. Between 1958 and 1963 more than 1,300,000 people from the South moved to the Centre-North, more than 800,000 of them to the cities of the industrial triangle, Turin foremost among them.[7]

“Every day, onto the platforms of Porta Nuova station, pours an ever-growing number of people who have arrived aboard the ‘Sun Train,’ a service that crosses Italy, from Sicily to Piedmont, in twenty-three hours.”

MuseoTorino, Immigration to Turin from the postwar years to the 1970s

In that decade the city's population rose from 753,000 inhabitants in 1953 to 1,114,000 in 1963.[7]

Restoration and intermodality

The most recent renovation, designed by the architect Marco Tamino, restored the historic architectural features, created a mezzanine between the central hall and the wings and reorganised walkways and car parks, while preserving the building's outer character.[1] On 5 October 2007 line 1 of the metro reached Porta Nuova, and on 6 March 2011 it was extended a further 3.8 kilometres to Lingotto.[8]

In November 2016 the underground car park on via Sacchi opened, built by Metropark for 11 million euros: 250 spaces on four levels and 11,000 square metres of covered space; at the same time the façade was restored to its original colours and lit by 400 LED lamps.[9] On 16 June 2021, with mayor Chiara Appendino in attendance, a cycle station for 100 bicycles with seven charging points for electric bikes was opened on via Nizza, in a historic building designed by Mazzucchetti; Grandi Stazioni Rail invested about 350,000 euros in it.[10] Today the terminal has 20 platforms for passenger trains, all step-free.[11]

Memories and uses of the station

Since 30 April 2022 a black granite plaque has stood under the arcades of via Nizza, dedicated to the 48 workers who died digging the Fréjus rail tunnel, completed in 1871; it had been discovered on 5 September 2021 and first displayed at the Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento, on the initiative of, among others, TELT, the promoter of the new Turin–Lyon line, and of RFI.[12] The Sala degli Stemmi hosts temporary exhibitions, such as the 2024 show of life-size dinosaurs.[13] On 14 February 2024 platform 1 welcomed the “Treno del Ricordo,” a travelling exhibition on the foibe massacres and the exodus from Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia, which had set out from Trieste on 10 February;[14] in August 2026 a historic train of the Turin–Ceres railway was due to leave the station for the Lanzo valleys.[15]

The station's future runs underground: the tender for the civil works of metro line 2, called on 6 May 2026 for about one billion euros, places the interchange with line 1 at Porta Nuova; the main works are expected to start in 2027 and finish by 2032.[16] The Turin transport system has its second hub in the other major station, Porta Susa.

Related articles: Chivasso, Grande Torino, Metropolitana di Torino, Primo Levi, Santuario della Consolata, Settimo Torinese

Pages linking here

Sources

  1. Mole24 — 19 October 2011
  2. Grandi Stazioni Retail
  3. Treccani, Enciclopedia Italiana —
  4. Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 23 —
  5. Sky Sport — 4 May 2023
  6. MuseoTorino
  7. MuseoTorino
  8. UrbanRail.net
  9. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 4 November 2016
  10. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 16 June 2021
  11. RFI – Rete Ferroviaria Italiana
  12. L'Agenda News — 30 April 2022
  13. L'Agenda News — 12 February 2024
  14. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 14 February 2024
  15. Mole24 — 16 August 2026
  16. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 6 May 2026

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