The Monument to the Siccardi laws

The Savoia Square is famous today for the imposing Baveno granite obelisk, 21 meters high, erected in 1853 in memory of the Siccardi laws of 1850. The idea of ​​erecting a celebratory monument for the controversial laws of the Minister of Justice and Senator Count Giuseppe Siccardi (who abolished the ecclesiastical forum) was already in 1851, on the initiative of the Turin newspaper Gazzetta del Popolo. The obelisk was designed by the painter and sculptor Luigi Quarenghi and the supporters of the project (including the director of the Gazzetta del Popolo, Giovanni Battista Bottero) proposed to place it in Piazza Carignano. Not without bitter discussions with the Turin clergy, the Archbishop Luigi Fransoni, on 23 November 1853 the monument was inaugurated here, as one of the phrases engraved on the obelisk recalls:

«Abolished by Law IX April MDCCCL the ecclesiastical forum, people and municipality placed IV March MDCCCLIII»
(Epigraph on the monument)

The monument also contains the names of the 800 municipalities that enthusiastically supported the work, carved on all sides. On the day of the laying of the first stone, June 17, 1852, numbers 141 and 142 of the Gazzetta del Popolo, a copy of the Siccardi law, coins, rice seeds, breadsticks and a bottle of Barbera wine were walled in the base. Fruit of the anti-clerical ideology, it was deliberately placed in a square near the Sanctuary of the Consolata, seat of the main city devotion, and in Palazzo Barolo, where the Catholic Giulia Falletti of Barolo resided.

During the Second World War, fighting in the city streets threatened to knock down the obelisk: fighters stationed in Corso Siccardi, in the direction of Via Cernaia, fired a few mortar rounds in the direction of Piazza Savoia, damaging the monument and causing it to falter; remained standing, it was restored after the war.
A second restoration, in 1993, cleaned the surface and the wide staircase.

Location : Piazza Savoia