Mole Antonelliana & Museo Nazionale del Cinema

Turin's most peculiar building -- in fact, one of the strangest structures anywhere -- comprises a squat brick base and a steep conelike roof, which supports several layers of Greek temples piled one atop the other, topped in turn by a needlelike spire, all of it rising 167m (548 ft.) above the rooftops of the city center (a height that at one time made the Mole the world's tallest building). Begun in 1863 and designed as a synagogue, the Mole, now a monument to Italian unification and architectural hubris, is home to Italy's National Film Museum. The museum's first section tracks the development of moving pictures, from shadow puppets to kinescopes. The rest is more of a tribute to film than a true museum, offering clips and stills to illustrate some of the major aspects of movie production, from The Empire Strikes Back storyboards to the creepy steady-cam work in The Shining. Of memorabilia, masks from the original Planet of the Apes, Satyricon, and Star Wars hang together near Lawrence of Arabia's robe, Chaplin's bowler, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane's dress. Curiously, most of the clips (all in Italian-dubbed versions), as well as posters and other memorabilia, are heavily weighted toward American movies, with exceptions mainly for the major players of European/international cinema like Fellini, Bertolucci, Truffaut, and Wim Wenders. Even if you skip the museum, you can still ascend to an observation platform at the top, an experience that affords two advantages -- the view of Turin and the surrounding countryside, backed by the Alps, is stunning -- and, echoing Guy de Maupassant's famous comment on the Eiffel Tower, it's the only place in Turin where you won't have to look at the damned thing.