Piazza Statuto Torino

In 1759 Giovanni Battista Beccaria, a famous Piedmontese geophysicist and mathematician, was invited by Carlo Emanuele III of Savoia to measure the meridian of Turin, the Gradus Taurinensis. Beccaria chose the segment that crosses Piedmont from Andrate to Mondovì, the 8th meridian, he began his geometrical-trigonometric measurements and on two points chosen, one in Rivoli and one in piazza Statuto, he laid two stones. More than fifty years later the stones were exhumed and on them were built two obelisks with on top an astrolabe in honor of Beccaria. The measurements do not correspond to the 8th meridian, nor, according to the legend, to the 45th parallel - which passes through Stupinigi, but now in the collective imagination that is the meaning of the obelisk that we find in the square.