From the viewing platform just below the spire of Turin’s Mole Antonelliana (the world’s tallest unreinforced masonry building), you can see in the distance a handsome late baroque church with a great dome and two belltowers, high atop a hill east of the city. The church is the Basilica of Superga. It’s a striking sight, especially in the evening, when it glows golden in the setting sun; and it conjures powerful memories for thousands of Torinese.
To explain, I must begin with the War of the Spanish Succession, a struggle between the Bourbons, headed by King Louis XIV of France, and
