IT07_03_Eng

In the center of Pinerolo is Piazza Facta, a square named after Luigi Facta, a politician and lawyer born in Pinerolo in 1861, famous for last serving as Prime Minister before the Mussolini government.

The square is overlooked by the church of San Rocco, an example of late Piedmontese baroque, and several buildings used as residences or for commercial and/or office and leisure activities (bar, ice cream parlor, restaurant, doctor’s office).

Among the streets of the old town and in this square, the Iron Mask event is held every year, an important event for the town, in which people wear medieval clothes and armor.

Here is the history of the Iron Mask:

During one of the last years of the very long reign of Louis XIV the Sun King, in 1703, a mysterious man, his face always masked, died in the Bastille. He had spent 34 years in prison, his face eternally concealed.

To date there have been as many as forty-eight hypotheses about the identity of the Iron Mask, some plausible, others suggestive and fictional. However, all of them are united by the impossibility of arriving at a precise and historically documentable identification. All we know for sure is that the masked man was imprisoned in Pinerolo from 1669 to 1681 as he was entrusted to the custody of Benigne Dauvergne of Saint Mars, then governor of Pinerolo. It was Voltaire who brought the affair of the Iron Mask to light. The philosopher, in 1717, imprisoned in the Bastille on that occasion spoke with some of the guards who had been assigned to guard the Iron Mask in previous years. In 34 years of segregation, the poor man was only allowed to confide in the confessor and his guardian Saint-Mars. Even the doctor, when he examined him, was unaware of his features, which remained strictly concealed under the famous mask. The mask was not actually an all-iron instrument; it was probably velvet over metal armor and was almost certainly used only when needed, as in transfers from one prison to another.His movements were shrouded in the utmost secrecy, since the mystery still persists, it is clear that all measures taken were effective. Those who managed to catch a glimpse of him only once said that he was “a ‘tall figure,” showed “white hair,” always wore “very fine linen,” and often received books. Beyond this nothing else leaked out never.