Obelisk At Piazza Statuto

Already in the Roman era this western part of the city, where the sun sets and darkness begins, was considered a poor area. For this reason, beyond the Porta Segusina, more precisely towards the slope that currently leads to merge with Corso Regina Margherita, convicted were crucifixed and deads were buried. This area was named precisely vallis occisorum (hence the name of the Valdocco area) and a vast necropolis took place which included the present area of ​​Corso Francia up to current via Cibrario and over Prince Eugene.

In 1864, the square was the scene of bloody clashes of the riots for the transfer of the capital.These historical precedents contributed to the belief that the square had something evil, until they become, as part of the legends of magical Turin, the vertex of the triangle of black magic (the others would be London and San Francisco). To be precise, it is believed that the summit of the triangle falls at the point indicated by a small obelisk with an astrolabe on top, located in the border of the small garden in front of the monument of the railway tunnel of Frejus.  

Actually this obelisk was erected in 1808 on a geodetic point, in memory of an old trigonometric calculation of 1760 on the length of a portion of the earth's meridian (the Gradus Taurinensis), performed along with other geographic points in Piedmont municipalities, in Rivoli (in which there is an twin obelisk ), in Andrate and Mondovi, by the famous Piedmontese mathematical geophysicist  Giovanni Battista Beccaria (the obelisk in fact, is also called "spire Beccaria"). To the latter it was also called the small stretch of the course (which was also the shortest course of Turin, 100 m, whose primacy then went over Ciro Menotti, just 60 m away) running from the obelisk to the garden Corso Principe Eugenio.Finally, at the center of the square near the fountain of Frejus, there is access leading to the sewer system here has its main hub. This factor also favored the emergence of legends and beliefs who want the Square as the center of negative magic or even the point of entry of one of the three "Alchemical Caves" that would be present in the city.There are organized tours that include the square as one of the main stages.