Turin revisited
Turin may be the most beautiful large city in Italy — grand boulevards, magnificent churches, and the shrines of Don Bosco and Dominic Savio. A second visit, this time with the Holy Shroud still not on display and the Middle East conflict weighing on the journey home. (4 min read)
I think Turin may be the most beautiful large city in Italy.
Perhaps that is because the streets seem more like France? The buildings are really grand, all the same height and it is flat. There are a lot of fancy stores and people are well dressed. The place I am staying (on Via XX Settembre) is really well located – a bit of a walk from the train stations but close to the historical centre and walkable to the churches I am interested in. I cant seem to capture the beauty of the streets with the camera – it is too expansive.
My highest priority was to go to the Basilica of Our Lady Help of Christians which houses the shrines of Don Bosco and Dominic Savio. It is a really beautiful church despite being relatively recent and restored after bombing in Second World War. I made my prayers here and a priest made a blessing over the rosaries.
Adjacent to the church, and in the grounds of a school, is the Don Bosco Museum. It was a treat to see the rooms of the original enterprise established by Don Bosco, as well as some paintings and personal articles that belonged to him and the other important people that followed. Great love has gone into this museum and the volunteers were really kind.
I had a superb vegetarian dinner on the first night which has its own blog.
My second day in Turin was not so satisfying. The Gallery of Modern Art (GAM) is up there with the Maritime Museum of Malta as amongst the worst I’ve been to. It was not welcoming, the visitor path was confusing, the visit to the permanent collection opens with open storage that is unlabelled. It is a very odd collection with uninteresting exhibits and I struggled to find much to photograph.
For many people, the hero of Turin is the holy shroud. I visited this, and the shroud museum in 2014, but I felt compelled to return. Again, the shroud was not on display. Like many of the world’s most famous churches, it was full of people acting like they were in a theme park rather than a holy place. I have to work hard to screen out the noise and to earnestly pray for the hoi polloi.
I spent too much time checking the news of the Middle East conflict the last few days. I ultimately decided to pay for a new flight home via Thailand to avoid UAE. What a messy and expensive debacle all of that has been.
© Paul McCarthy & Iluminar.au
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