Santuario della Consolata Torino

Until the early decades of the sixteenth century, the city remained closed within the Roman walls. Between 1536 and 1540 the French, who had occupied the city, built four bastions to reinforce the corner towers. The one next to the northern corner will be demolished in 1723 along with a portion of the Roman walls as part of the project to enlarge the city and its fortifications. In the demolition of the imposing structure numerous decorated marbles were recovered, which had probably been used for repairs or reinforcements of the ancient walls. The discovery is of great interest, many inscriptions are drawn and copied and some of them were studied by the historian and erudite Veronese Scipione Maffei visiting the Savoy court. In 1724 Vittorio Amedeo II decided to entrust to Maffei the task of setting up the first nucleus of the Museum of Antiquities with the epigraphs found in the demolition of the Consolata bastion and with other marbles recovered from the Carlo Emanuele I Gallery. Today a part of those marbles is visible at the Royal Museums of Turin, in the Museum of Antiquities.