Speaking of Turin legends, there is a big one that cuts way
closer to home for me than the Shroud. I
was a voracious reader of Nietzsche during my last couple of years of college
and then during law school. During Christmas
and summer breaks, I couldn’t put his books down.
The 1880s were a prolific period for Friedrich Nietzsche,
and he spent the last few years of that period living in Torino. But Nietzsche famously suffered from a
complete mental breakdown in January 1889.
Although he lived for another decade, he was catatonic and insane for
the rest of his life. This is
undisputed.
A tale attached to his breakdown, however, might not be true. Nietzsche was living
in an apartment on the Piazza Carlo Alberto in downtown Torino. I now know that this is an incredibly elegant
piazza – it was my favorite in Torino.
The story goes that, one day, while walking around near his apartment,
Nietzsche saw a coach driver beating his horse.
Nietzsche supposedly flung his arms around the horse’s neck to protect
it, and then collapsed to the ground unconscious. He never again uttered a sane sentence. (Milan Kundera writes of the episode in “The
Unbearable Lightness of Being.”)
The point is that I could not visit Turin without stopping
by Nietzsche’s apartment, and seeing the site of his home and collapse. It turns out that the Piazza Carlo Alberto is
one of the best spots in town anyway – replete with some cafes, an impeccably-manicured center lawn, and a couple of museums with wonderful architecture – so you don’t have
to go out of your way to see the historical spot. Some pics:
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| Nietzsche's apartment is the one with the orange curtain -- second one in on the second floor. |
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| The Museo Rissorgimento - a museum telling the history of Italy's formation in the 19th Century |
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| Piazza Carlo Alberto |
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