• The Mole Antonelliana was originally planned to function as a Jewish synagogue.
• Nowadays it is a movie museum, believed to be the tallest museum in the world.
• It is a major landmark of city, named in honor its architect.
• The Jewish community of Turin had enjoyed full civil rights since 1848, and at the time the construction of the synagogue began with a budget of 250,000 lira. Antonelli was notable for having recently added an "idiosyncratic" 121 metre-high dome and spire to the seventeenth-century Church of San Gaudenzio at Novara. The community hired him to build the synagogue for 280,000 lira, but relationship between Architect and the Jewish community was not good enough, due modifications proposals raising the final height to 113 meters, over 47 meters higher than the dome in the original design. Such changes, in addition to greater costs and construction time than were originally anticipated, did not please the Jewish community and construction was halted in 1869 with a provisional roof.
• With the removal of the Italian capital to Florence in 1864, the community shrank, but costs and Antonelli's ambition continued to rise. In 1876 the Jewish community, which had spent 692,000 lire for a building that was still far from finished, announced that it was withdrawing from the project. The people of Turin, who had watched the synagogue rise skyward, demanded that the city take over the project. An exchange was arranged between the Jewish community and the city of Turin for a piece of land on which a handsome Moorish Revival synagogue was quickly built. The Mole was dedicated to Victor Emmanuel II. Antonelli again began construction, which took the height to 146, 153, and finally 167 meters (548 feet). From 1908 to 1938, the city used it to house its Museum of the Risorgimento, which was moved to the Palazzo Carignano in 1938.
• On 23 May 1953 a violent cloudburst, accompanied by a tornado, destroyed the uppermost 47 metres of the pinnacle, which was rebuilt in 1961 as a metal structure covered with stone.
• Since 2000, the building has housed the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, the National Museum of Film. The Mole appears on the reverse of the two cent Italian euro coins and was the official emblem of the 2006 Winter Olympics. It is also the official emblem of the 2005 World Bocce Championships and the 2006 World Fencing Championships.
• On one side of the four-faced dome, the first Fibonacci numbers are written with red neon lights: they are part of the artistic work Il volo dei Numeri ("Flight of the numbers") by Mario Merz.
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