INHALE. INSPIRES HOW TO BE INSPIRED

Walk along the streets and stop in the squares of Borgo Nuovo: a route for meeting Muses and compose the trio that will make the history of literature, or to find the idea that will change humanity's destiny... but also a stroll to answer more ordinary questions like "Should I or shouldn't I buy a new car?!", or "Should I leave Gianluigi for Carlo Maria?"...

INSTRUCTIONS

What to bring:

• paper and pen, essential if you feel like a poet, or an artist or if, at least for a day, you'd like to pretend to be one;
• your camera, a tape recorder and whatever else may help to capture inspiration.

What to leave home:

• anxiety and stress
• friends who talk too much
• your mobile phone (if you can't separate from it, at least switch it off!)

WALK AND REST

Via Maria Vittoria, via dei Mille, via San Francesco da Paola...
roads that naturally lead you along them and... walking helps reflections; thus let yourself follow these straight streets and let the route guide your thoughts too, it'll help to... straighten them out!

The tall buildings that line the streets stop ideas from getting dispersed or deviated and help define them.
The roads are long, walk along the full length... to reach the bottom of issues. Along the way you'll meet piazza Carlina, piazza Maria Teresa, or piazza Bodoni... they'll welcome you in an embrace and make you want to stop and let yourself go...

So take a break, stop walking and thinking: sit on a bench and let your ideas settle, crystallise the results of your reflections. The light in these squares makes them the perfect place for seeing things more clearly, or even to receive... enlightenment!

CERTIFICATE OF GUARANTEE

If you don't find the answer to your Hamlet- like doubt don't give up, keep walking. It's practically certain that you're in the right place, just think of the many great personalities who've walked around here: D'Azeglio, Gramsci... The plates reminding you of their presence around the neighbourhood guarantee that this area really... inspires!

INSPIRED BY THREE WELLKNOWN BORGO NUOVO ARTISTS

Along Borgo Nuovo streets and squares inspiration is in the air: indeed, this neighbourhood has been chosen by many artists for their studios and workshops.

Within the aristocratic and fascinating Palazzo Coardi di Carpeneto the Cooperativa Arti Visive '78 (Visual Arts Cooperative '78) has its studios. This space used to be an ebony carver's workshop and, where today paintings are exhibited, there are still some tables the artisan worked on. Along the walls, round windows overlook - on one side - the intimate and suggestive courtyard, on the other piazza Carlina, the heart of Borgo Nuovo and its inspiring atmosphere.

It is through these portholes that the quarter's light, voices and smells penetrate the studio and, somehow, participate in the artists' work. What is inspiration for them? And what is it Borgo Nuovo that inspires them?

FRANZ CLEMENTE: INSPIRATION GIVES "AN IMPULSE FOR WORKING"

For painter Franz Clemente the visions from the round windows are a source of inspiration or, as the artist defines it, "an impulse for working" with colours and paintbrushes.
So,many of Clemente's watercolours represent the views from the studio's portholes. The artist, actually, likes "spying" from this privileged viewpoint the life animating piazza Carlina; with a click of his camera he steals a snapshot of the infinite tales crossing this space and later reprocesses it with his watercolours, fragments of stories to be reconstructed.
What ties Clemente's work to the neighbourhood, above all, are these private stories, witnessed by the quarter itself.
The painter, in a series of pieces, has examined another characteristic element of the area: the portals, which he sees as "diaphragms between public and private".
Portals have their narrative suggestion: they evoke the stories hidden behind them.

MARCO SEVESO: INSPIRATION IS "CONVERGING THOUGHTS"

While for Clemente the link between his works and the neighbourhood are the stories, for painter Marco Seveso the link is history.
Seveso is attracted to and inspired by history's traces, those tangible signs that, like wrinkles on a face, characterise Borgo Nuovo's appearance.
Plates, monuments and buildings, have styles that collocate them within identifiable periods and represent a past constantly in relation to the present, which moves all around him.
The signs of history in the neighbourhood suggest reflections to the painter - for Seveso inspiration is "converging thoughts that have matured an idea for a long time"- on change, on the difficult relation between past and present and on the deriving social problems.
This special relation between the artist and the place in which he's chosen to work emerges clearly in the pencil drawing" Anatomia Urbana - piazza Carlina". Here the monument's base is the background, while the people and cars that are moving, tend to be part of it.

GIORGIO LUZZI: INSPIRATION IS "THE IMPULSE IMPOSING ITSELF"

The poet and literary critic Giorgio Luzzi often spends time with his painter friends, sharing their work and inspirational space to make poetry and figurative art meet according to the tradition of Parisian ateliers.
Indeed Luzzi feels rooted within this neighbourhood especially because of the Parisian echoes you can breathe here, and he especially loves piazza Bodoni, which he describes as the most Parisian of Turin's squares.
The poet says piazza Carlina is an "umbilical" place, with which to engage in "primary relations", because in this neuralgic Borgo Nuovo spot everything converges, all times and the whole of history.
From the studio's window he indicates the Santa Croce dome, the Annunziata and Cappuccini bell tower, standing along the same perspective line.
For Luzzi these aligned architectural elements, joined by an aesthetics recalling past times, constitute the metaphor of a lasting axis.
For the poet this and other visions of the neighbourhood establish direct contact with history and bring back an idea that today tends to be hidden: that of the subject's duration. Luzzi describes the inspiration radiating from the area as "the impulse imposing itself against the crushing of the eternal present".