The fortified Citadel of Turin

During the 1706 siege by the French-Spanish
army and the episode of Pietro Micca

It's certainly hard to image the 1583 small capital city of the Dukedom of the House of Savoy in today's populated and extended Turin. At that time it was surrounded by solid belt of 16 fortified ramparts, long walls and a host of moats within a pentagonal shaped star citadel on the south-western part of the inhabited area and was considered one of Europe's most modern and best defended strongholds.

Four gates, or Portas, opened in the walls of the fortified town:

Porta di Po, where the beginning of Piazza Vittorio is today;

Porta Nuova, at the end of Via Nuova (today's Via Roma);

Porta Segusina, where Via Dora Grossa (Via Garibaldi today) crosses Via della Consolata;

Porta di Dora or Porta di Palazzo, in Via Milano towards the river Dora Riparia.

Gates were normally closed at sunset and opened at sunrise.

Building of the Citadel of Turin started on Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy's order in 1564 on a project by captain and Architect Francesco Pacciotto. The main entry consisted of an imposing donjon (the only part of the original building that has remained to our days) where the National Museum of Artillery is now.

Turin's fortress could exploit two defensive tactics. One with the barrage of its 1200 metre range artillery guns and musketry, another cunning and sudden one with remarkable and disconcerting practical and psychological effects: a mine war with a network of some 14 kilometres of mine and countermine galleries fought by heroic mole-men.

This series of mine and countermine galleries covered two levels, one at 13÷14 and the other at 5÷6 metres depth respectively, interconnected by staircases and provided with many side branches that led away from the main capital galleries and ended at mining and listening posts.

The mine galleries were to reach below the besieger's positions, upset and sometimes swallow entire enemy posts while the countermine ones were designed to oppose the besieger's mines and listen to what the enemy sappers were doing underground and have a chance to neutralise his plans.

A war was if fact being waged in Italy between Louis XIV the Sun King of France and his ally Spain against the Austrian Empire, the so called Great Alliance, that included Austria, England, Holland and Portugal.

Piedmont experienced may war events during those years.

During the summer of 1706, 33 year old Duke De La Feuillade started besieging the Turin Citadel, contrary to what the celebrated Marshall De Vauban had advised a year before, namely to attack Turin from the Monte dei Capuccini and the river Po.

Duke Vittorio Amedeo II ordered that the Turin stronghold be defended mostly by the artillery commanded by General Solaro della Margarita and left town by crossing the river Po not completely controlled by the enemy yet. He then used his cavalry in a feint manoeuvre and caused La Feuillade to embark in a vain pursuit that subtracted a sizeable contingent of forces from the French army.

French losses to reach Turin defence works were enormous. They still had to experience the disastrous and terrifying effects of underground mines however. In August De Fouillade was left with only 27,000 of the original 44,000 men he had had at the beginning of the attack, proving that the French advisors who had upheld that the enemy had dug underground first and only had to wait for events to occur since all mining advantages were on their side had been right.

The French succeeded in infiltrating some of our underground drifts in early August. The contribution by mining war to the resistance of the Turinese was incalculable and often decisive in this case.

Around midnight of August 26 1706, two sappers were on guard on the connection stairway of and the upper gallery, a few metres from the gate at the end of the main moat.

One of the two soldiers was called Pietro Micca ... he heard axes and maces being violently wielded against the ironclad door ... the situation must have suddenly seemed very critical indeed to him ... his companion was kneeling over the fuse but couldn't set it alight. Minutes went by and the French redoubled their attacks on the door ... it was the end if it fell! Pietro Micca understood the need for a risky act; he told his companion to get away by yelling him in a few words to save his life, then unhesitatingly lit up the fuse and tried to escape ... a few seconds later, the door suddenly collapsed and the mine exploded nearly at the same time burying the French who had penetrated the gallery. A body found a forty paces from the ladder of the lower gallery was what remained of this heroic Piedmontese soldier, originally from Adorno Sagliano and nicknamed Passapertutt.

Eight days after the episode of Pietro Micca on September 7 1706, and after a bloody battle fought close to Turin between the areas of Madonna di Campagna and Lucento, the Austrian-Savoy army led by Prince Eugenio of Savoy defeated the French-Spanish army, broke the 4-month siege and liberated Turin!

In fulfilment of a vow by Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy following on the victory over the French, the famous Basilica designed by Filippo Juvarra was built between 1715 and 1727 on the 670 metre high hill of Superga, after levelling and lowering it by over 40 metres.

The whole complex of the Citadel galleries were left in deplorable conditions of abandonment by the Turinese who only remembered their existence when some of them were adapted for use as air raid shelters during World War II.

Construction of foundations for some buildings during the early 20th Century caused partial destruction of some galleries but also served to recall attention and rekindle interest.

Colonel Magni started research for evidence of this glorious past in 1909. Detailed in-depth study and the October 1958 finding of the ladder that had witnessed the episode of Pietro Micca, the cleaning and reopening of the galleries (and the simultaneous creation of the Historical Museum) were due to the stubborn activity of the then young and impassioned Captain and later General Amoretti, today's Museum director.