Museum of Pietro Micca and the Siege of Turin in 1706, Turin

Museo Civico Pietro Micca e dell'Assedio di Torino del 1706 (Museum of Pietro Micca and the Siege of Turin in 1706) is a museum that was founded in 1961 on the occasion of the celebration of the centenary of the unification of Italy. The origins of the museum can be traced back to the figure and action of Brigadier General Guido Amoretti who, observing the works for the construction of the foundations of a building near his office in the building area of the Citadel of Turin, saw some galleries come to light. He also discovered that other tunnels had been used during the Second World War as bomb shelters.

Access to the galleries was through the cellars of some buildings in the area. A dense labyrinth of underground tunnels over 21 kilometers long was discovered which extended outside the Citadel at the relief bastion in the direction of the countryside. This grid was functional to the defense of the Citadel, the tunnels allowed to reach the so-called countermine tunnels, stowed with explosives, so that they explode so as to create chasms and finally interrupt or slow down the advance of any aggressors. The network included galleries called capitals which extended radially outwards and were in turn divided into high capitals and low capitals, superimposed as they were on each other; a masterful gallery united the high capitals running outside the moat.

Another series of tunnels was given by the secondary galleries which branched off from the previous ones to cover a vast area. Finally, small stretches of tunnel at a more contained height were used to reach the single furnaces (or countermine tunnel as already written) prepared for the explosion of the explosive.during the Siege of Turin in 1706 both for the absolute inability to predict if and where the ground had exploded, and for the heroic sacrifice of Pietro Micca who set fire to the fuse of an explosive charge in the tunnel preventing the French from penetrating in the basement.

Amoretti begins a work of discovery and restoration of the tunnels and during this period, in 1958 , the famous staircase was found where the miner Pietro Micca detonated the mine. All this led to the establishment of the museum.

The museum is housed in a two-story building, one of which is underground. The building, built in 1961 on the occasion of the celebrations for the centenary of the Unification of Italy , stands on the site where a French battery of two large pieces of artillery was placed to beat the defense walls of the Citadel during the siege of Turin. The building is directly connected to the underground tunnel system of the Citadel.

Inside the rooms there are eighteenth- century weapons, maps and paintings of the areas affected by the battles and some models that reconstruct the areas affected by the events. The most evocative part of the visit, however, is undoubtedly the one that takes visitors into the galleries, in some points rather low, up to the staircase along which Pietro Micca descended after having triggered the fuse and up to the point where the body was found of him.

Even today it is possible to see the place where the terrible explosion took place.