THE BASILICA OF SUPERGA: THE MEANING OF THE ENTRANCE
THE BASILICA OF SUPERGA: THE MEANING OF THE ENTRANCE
The Basilica of Superga, a Juvarrian architectural and landscape masterpiece and a landmark in Turin’s skyline, is experiencing a period of renewed attention and growing public success. A destination for sporting and religious pilgrimages, a symbol of Savoyard Turin, and a privileged vantage point over the city, Superga—and the ascent to the Basilica—has once again become a classic Sunday outing. Visitor numbers have risen from 80,000 to 145,000 since 2019, with a significant increase from 2021 onward, the year in which the complex was entrusted to Sermig, which now oversees its management by integrating spirituality, sport, and culture.
Within this context comes the Masterplan for renewal and restoration coordinated by Benedetto Camerana Studio—a project that offers the studio an opportunity to restore value and centrality to one of the city’s most representative places. The temporary ticket office represents the first concrete intervention in this process developed in collaboration with SERMIG for the definition of the vision of use, and with the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiC) for the approach to the historic and artistic asset.Despite its modest scale and temporary nature, it carries strong strategic and aesthetic value: it guides the flows of a growing audience and acts as an operational and narrative device that anticipates the future layout of services and access points within the complex.
Indeed, it occupies and activates a space that is currently residual and transitional, foreshadowing the future geography of services and access to the complex—around which the new main entrance, planned at ground level in the northern wing, will be organized. Here, the spaces directly accessible to the public (ticket office, bookshop, food services, and areas for temporary activities) will be in direct connection with the courtyard.
The ticket office consists of an essential volume, built around the design of emptiness, with large glazed surfaces, shaped frames, and slender horizontal planes. These rhythms define a porous interior, openly accessible to a broad and diverse public—consistent with the inclusive and democratic management of the site. At the same time, the architecture’s very concreteness clearly expresses its impermanence. It is an architecture “on tiptoe”, at the service of the Juvarrian complex, engaging in dialogue without competing with it. Constructed entirely from standard elements assembled dry, the structure is designed to be dismantled and reused—a reversible and responsible project in which temporariness and flexibility become design criteria, leaving behind a new pattern of use and a different culture of welcome. It is intended to be dismantled at the end of its life cycle, once the spaces of the new entrance are activated.
The ticket office is only the entrance—the prelude—to a broader process of opening up, accessibility, and enhancement of the monumental complex. A small-scale model that encapsulates the philosophy of the overall project and the founding values of Benedetto Camerana Studio’s language: minimal, respectful, and deeply integrated with its context.