The Mole Antonelliana is a major landmark building in Turin, Italy, named after its architect, Alessandro Antonelli. A mole in Italian is a building of monumental proportions. Construction began in 1863, soon after Italian unification, and was completed in 1889, after the architect’s death. Originally conceived of as a synagogue, it now houses the National Museum of Cinema, and is the tallest museum in the world with a height of 167.5 m.
The National Museum of Cinema (Museo Nazionale del Cinema) located in Turin, Italy, is a motion picture museum fitted inside the Mole Antonelliana tower. It is operated by the Maria Adriana Prolo Foundation, and the core of its collection is the result of the work of the historian and collector Maria Adriana Prolo. It was housed in the Palazzo Chiablese.
The museum houses pre-cinematographic optical devices such as magic lanterns, earlier and current film technologies, stage items from early Italian movies, and other memorabilia.
Along the exhibition path of about 3.200 m2 on five levels, it is possible to visit some areas devoted to the different kinds of the film crew, and in the main hall, fitted in the temple hall of the Mole (which was a building originally intended as a synagogue), a series of chapels representing several film genres.
The museum keeps a huge and growing collection of film posters, stocks, and a library: at present, it includes 20,000 devices, paintings, and printed artworks, more than 80,000 pictures, over 300,000 film posters, 12,000 movie reels, 26,000 books (as of February 2006). A movie screen located in the Massimo multiplex, near the museum, is reserved for retrospectives and other museum initiatives. The museum hosts several film festivals, the major and most prestigious of them being the Torino Film Festival.
Inside the museum, there is also a panoramic elevator (opened in 2000) with transparent glass walls, that covers its 75 meters ride in 59 seconds, in the single open space span of the building, without middle floors, up to the “small temple” which gives a 360 degrees panoramic view of the city.
According to Wikipedia
