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Photo: Eccekevin, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
A jewel of baroque architecture and sacred art built from 1680 by businessmen anxious to sanctify their dealings - they were, let's stress, "The Pious Congregation of Bankers, Shopkeepers and Merchants of Turin." One theme of the decor is the Magi, bearing the trade valuables without which the Christian church couldn't exist. The chapel was created within Chiesa dei Santi Martiri, a 16th-century Jesuit church. Its best-known artefact is the "calendario perpetuo" made by Giovanni Amedeo Plana in 1831. This predicts lunar phases, tides, days of the week and Christian holy days for 4000 years from Year Zero (1 BC in the Gregorian calendar); thereafter it's askew as it misses an extra leap-day tweak. It ranks among the world's earliest computers, though pipped by Babbage's "difference engine" of 1822.
The cappella dei Mercanti, Negozianti e Banchieri, better known as cappella dei Mercanti, is a Catholic chapel in the historic city center of Turin, Italy.
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Baroque bling palace, visit by guided tour. Its last private owner Carlo Tancredi Falletti di Barolo served Napoleon then worked tirelessly for relief of the poor; his palace then became an opera house.
MAO
This museum houses art from Kandahar, India, Southeast Asia, China and Japan. The third floor shows Buddhist and Tibetan culture. The fourth floor is Islamic and Arabian, mainly bronzes, ceramics and tiles.
This church was built in the 1730s for a Carmelite convent.
Museo della Sindone
The original Sindone or Turin Shroud is in safekeeping in the Cathedral and rarely displayed. This small museum displays a copy and studies the Shroud. It's a remarkable object whatever it is, a 4.4 x 1.1 m winding sheet charred by fire and appearing to bear the likeness of a man, matching the Gospel description of the crucifixion of Jesus. Multiple tests have produced contradictory results, or at least contradictory interpretations. It's only reliably known to have existed since 1390 when it was denounced as a forgery, and radio-carbon dating matches that. But no deliberate attempt to reproduce it has managed to capture all its qualities, especially the 3D effect of its photo negative, and neither natural nor artificial processes convincingly explain it. So just look and wonder.
Church of the Virgin of the Consolation
A church and Benedictine monastery may have stood here since the 5th century. Most of it is from 1680 to 1740, an over-the-top profusion of baroque.
This church was built from 1634 by Guarino Guarini to a complex baroque design, where square basilica plan and Grecian cross segues into circular, octagonal and elliptical forms. This creates a striking light-play, especially in the dome, which Guarini might not be pleased to know is dubbed faccia del diavolo, the face of the devil.