Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Europe Day 12: Egyptians and Catholics and Zombies, Oh My!

Self portrait:


Somewhat surprisingly, Torino has the second largest Egyptian museum in the world (behind Cairo), so we spent Saturday morning as a group touring that.


We had a guided tour...saw all the usual things associated with Egyptian history...mummies, statues, pottery, really really old bread, etc.


Above: Really really old bread.
Nice museum, not related to the Olympics, but worth going to, I suppose.


Following the Egyptian museum, we split into groups to explore more of the city. The group I was with saw the Roman ruins in Torino:


Then, we went literally across the street to see the shroud of Turin. Perhaps I shouldn't admit this here, but I had not quite connected that since the shroud of Turin is in Turin, and since Turin is the same place as Torino, therefore the shroud of Turin is in Torino...anyway, gorgeous cathedral, of course, and impressive shrine to the shroud. My understanding is that the shroud of Turin is supposed to be the burial cloth of Jesus. I believe I've read substantial evidence that the cloth itself is not old enough to actually be authentic, but I don't really know much about it, and the Catholics at the cathedral certainly seemed to believe it.


The shroud itself is obviously very valuable and delicate, so what we actually saw was the shroud of the shroud of Turin, but it was impressive nonetheless. Unfortunately, no pictures allowed directly...


Above: a glimpse of the shroud of the shroud of Turin (Torino)
fate


In the spirit of trying new foods, I ordered veal at the small restaurant we went to for lunch...it was good, but apparently when you order veal, you get...veal. Two little pieces of veal. And nothing else. Tasted good, but not much food...
After lunch, we went to the National Cinema Museum. The cinema museum is located in a huge building that was constructed in the 1860s as a Jewish Synagogue, but after extensive cost overruns, the Jewish community backed out of paying for it, so the structure was never used as a religious facility. It was apparently the tallest masonry structure in the world, until part of the top collapsed, at which time it was rebuilt not out of masonry.


The museum itself was really cool. It started out with displays on the history of cinema, including optical illusions, magic lanterns, shadow puppets, stereoscopic photography, etc.


After the history of cinema technology displays, we moved into the main dome, where the museum sort of wrapped around the walls of the dome. The featured displays were on vampires, zombies, ghosts, and mummies in film, so there were posters and history from hundreds of films about the undead.There were also very elaborate displays on parts of the process of filmmaking, notable films, etc. Amazing museum...I think our group's only complaint was that with clips playing from movies around every corner, a lot of the playing films weren't labeled...but the rest of the museum was awesome!





Props
In the center of the dome was an elevator to the observation deck atop the tower. This elevator was unique to me in that it was only suspended on cables. Never seen anything quite like it.


We went up and had fantastic views of the city of Torino from the tower.








For our class group dinner, we went to a cafeteria down the street from the hotel, where I ordered a pizza with some toppings listed in Italian. Turned out to be good, but...different:


Yes, that's French fries and pepperoni. And...that about covers our last day in Italy!

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