torino two times

We headed to Torino for the chocolate festival this weekend and did our best to honor the spirit of the event -- indulging in samples and skads of wanton chocolate purchasing. While it wasn't in the same piazza as last year (we know because we were there) it was almost as good. We couldn't find the smoked chocolate, and the salted chocolate (our favorite) was only available in the smaller, and more expensive, bars. But we did find a flourless chocolate cake, the size of a dessert plate and heavy as a brick, that's now in our kitchen waiting to be devoured.

Reaching into the sky above Torino is a spired tower that can be seen from almost every piazza and open space in the city. You could see it from the chocolate fest - and it shows up on the right in the first photo. This symbol of Torino is popularly known as "The Mole" and was finished in 1889; at 167 meters many claim it be the tallest structure in Italy. What was originally intended to be a synagogue is today a well-known observation point whose main building houses the Torino Cinema Museum.



The view from the tower is a good one although the elevator ride to the top is the real adventure. Twenty seconds of glass-walled lift through open space. No girders, no elevator shaft, just a glass elevator gliding up, up, up along its cables. Sheer exhilaration.

The cinema museum is excellent. Starting with the simple play between light and shadow and reaching into today's technologies, the museum traces the development of cinema over time. In our attempts to enter the museum, and our wanderings within it, three themes made themselves brilliantly clear: 1. the domination of Hollywood in the film world, 2. how very cool a museum can be, and 3. a certain nonchalance towards customer service.



The museum is basically an opportunity to see never-ending examples of film and its precursors. The space is surprisingly interactive and you find yourself exploring the many floors and exhibits, watching clips from every genre, era and style. There were surreal films playing in a giant refrigerator with toilets as the theater seats. Experimental films screening in a mad scientist's laboratory, TVs glowing in the sinks and stove. Horror films presented in a haunted mansion complete with a coffin under the floor.



In the center of the museum, in the large space under the tower with the elevator rising directly above, is a theater where guests recline in lounger seats with speakers at their heads, watching films play on giant screens in front of them and, intermittently, projected on the interior of the tower. The vaulted ceiling becomes a giant screen, with the stick-straight cables leading into a small hole in the roof through which the elevator reaches the spire. As you might imagine, it's quite dramatic.

It's true that a majority of the films will be easily-recognizable to Americans. You can't escape the fact that Hollywood churns out more than a few of the world's most popular films. And you'll see clips of them at every turn. Even in the screening room we couldn't quite figure out -- its theme had something to do with love and you have to lay down on a giant, circular, red velvet bed to see the film clips which were playing on the ceiling. We found ourselves laying there with a young Italian couple, watching films play in the muted light. Once we got up, we were replaced by a quintet of silver-haired ladies who giggled as they lay down.



I should mention that we waited in two lines to enter the museum. First, the "wrong" line which could easily have been avoided if the young lady manning the cash register had been more interested in us rather than her pile of un-counted euro pennies. Which she proceeded to count as we stood in front of her. And count. And count. She finally told us we had to go wait in the other line. And once we finally did reach the other cashier - after 30 minutes standing in the sun - our previous "helper" double-checked with her cashier colleague that we had actually waited in the line. (As if we'd been hiding in some dark corner of the museum for half an hour and had only just then popped out to cut in line.)

Additionally, there was a staff member at the top of a very, very long spiraling ramp who let us know, in no uncertain terms, that our understanding of the museum layout was quite off and that we were to head right back down that long spiraling ramp until we were back at the bottom. And that was that. No more discussion about it.

I will say, though, that even though the customer is never right, especially at the cinema museum, it behooves the customer to visit the cinema museum. Because it is so very cool. Especially when you've got chocolate in your pockets.