Draft:Via Giuseppe Garibaldi (Turin)

Via Garibaldi is a pedestrian street, one of the main ones in the historic centre of Turin , which connects Piazza Castello with Piazza Statuto and represents one of the oldest streets in the city, as well as one of the main axes of the Iulia Augusta Taurinorum , up to Via della Consolata. Under Vittorio Amedeo II it was extended to the current Corso Valdocco and in the nineteenth century it was finally connected to Piazza Statuto by the last stretch equipped with buildings with porticos. It has always been the main street of the city, due to its length, until 1882 it was known to the people of Turin as Contrà Dòira Gròssa (in Italian "Contrada di Dora Grossa"). [ 2 ] Surrounded by eighteenth-century buildings , it is considered, with its 963 metres of development and known as "decumanus maximus", the second longest European pedestrian street, after rue Sainte-Catherine in Bordeaux . [ 3 ] [ 4 ]

The street acts as an ideal "watershed" between the streets that cross it, so that streets on the same axis have different names on the north side compared to the south side and their respective street numbers start from the intersection with Via Garibaldi.

History

From decumanus maximus to Contrada di Dora Grossa

The history of Via Garibaldi is as old as the city. In Roman times, it was the decumanus maximus of the then Julia Augusta Taurinorum and constituted, together with the cardo maximus (i.e. the current Via San Francesco and Via Porta Palatina), one of the two main axes of the ancient Roman city, which then had just five thousand inhabitants and connected two of the four access gates to the city: the Porta Decumana and the Porta Prætoria .

The Porta Decumana can still be identified in the front towers of Palazzo Madama , while the western gate, or Porta Prætoria , was located on the current Via Garibaldi, at the height of Via della Consolata. The road deteriorated during the period following the fall of the Western Roman Empire , reducing to just four meters wide and becoming narrow and unpaved, lined with low brick buildings and some widenings corresponding to the temples transformed into churches; at that time it was called strata Civitatis Taurini . It nevertheless maintained its commercial function, given its notable importance: this was the route taken by merchants who, entering the city from Porta Segusina, crossed it. Precisely for this reason, one of the various names that the road took over time was "via Sant'Espedito", protector of merchants. However, over time, the street took the name of Contrada Dora Grossa, most likely owing this name to a rather curious project carried out by order of Emanuele Filiberto : in 1573 he ordered the canalization of the nearby Dora and the water from other city canals to be used to clean the city's alleys. In Piedmontese, the word dòira , in fact, indicates a small stream or trickle and since the new dòira built along the street had become one of the city's main canals, the street took its historical name from it.

The new route of via Dora Grossa

Since 1714, the works ordered by Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy and continued by his successor Carlo Emanuele III , in collaboration with Filippo Juvarra , redefined its perimeter and extended its route. In the nineteenth century, following the new expansions of the city, via Dora Grossa was connected to piazza Statuto . Since it was the main street of the city, on which many of the most important buildings stood, as early as 1730 it was equipped with a system of sidewalks, today considered with good probability the oldest in Europe. It was also one of the few paved streets in Turin, instead of the normal beaten earth that characterized the city streets of the time. Modernized throughout the eighteenth century , via Dora Grossa saw splendid churches built on its sides and the prestige given by its commercial activities increasingly increased. After the French occupation during the Napoleonic period, the street was renamed rue du Mont-Cenise (Via Moncenisio), but with the return of the Savoy in 1814 it returned to being called Via Dora Grossa. Following the unification of Italy, finally, it was named after Giuseppe Garibaldi .

A road traversed by intense public and private traffic, it was initially reserved for public traffic only (trams, buses and taxis) and then, in 1979, after much discussion and controversy among the citizens, it became entirely pedestrian.

Buildings of interest

Along the route there are:

Church of the Holy Martyrs
Church of the Holy Trinity
Church of San Dalmazzo
Scaglia Palace of Verrua
Saluzzo Palace of Paesana

Bibliography

Renzo Rossotti, The Streets of Turin, Newton Compton Editori, 1995
Giuseppe Torricella, Turin and its streets, Turin, 1868
Where, How, When - Turin Guide '98-99, Turin, Vincentian Volunteer Groups, 1997