Turin’s jewel-box in the sky

It is not every day that an exhibition of just 25 works of art is officially opened by a head of state. But this is Italy – and the art belongs to the legendary Gianni Agnelli, head of the Fiat empire. The little gallery containing it is designed by Renzo Piano; and it is perched above the roof of the visionary Lingotto car factory at Turin, one of the most extraordinary industrial buildings ever made.

As Signor Ciampi made his way across the red carpet on 21 September, he passed a display of historic Fiat cars which had been driven up the purpose-built ramps that wind through the guts of the factory. Once there, the cars could be taken through their paces by being driven around a full-size test track that wraps around the roof, complete with vertiginous banking of the kind that once made Brooklands so awesome.

There is something truly imperial about all this. The test track gives to the elongated rectangle of the roof the shape of the Circus of Maxentius in Rome, in the middle of which was a spina, a raised ‘spine’ upon which the officials were placed (think Ben-Hur). Lingotto, like imperial Rome, has two symmetrical low buildings located upon a spina, one towards either end. Like Rome, too, this is where the timekeepers worked, only with automobiles rather than chariots. They now function as entrances and exits, housing lifts and stairs. Renzo Piano’s new Pinacoteca Agnelli, which resembles a second world war landing craft that has taken flight in steel and glass, sits above one of the two spina buildings. The other was already surmounted by a remarkable Piano structure, a helicopter pad flung out into space, but lightly anchored to a great glass bowl, the bolla (‘bubble’) which is used for meetings and – in another touch of imperial splendour – banquets.

To understand the full effect you have to imagine a roof absurdly large in scale; upon it, the race-track; above, a vast expanse of sky, against which the two Piano superstructures seem to float; the green slopes of Colle della Maddalena to the south; and the whole of Turin set out to north and west, its domes, theatres, and temples barely glittering in the smoky air.