Zoo di Torino, Former zoological garden in Parco Michelotti, Turin, Italy.
The Zoo di Torino occupied about 50,000 square metres of the Michelotti park in the Borgo Po district, between Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I and Ponte Regina Margherita. Engineer Gabriele Manfredi designed the layout, opened on 21 October 1955 by mayor Amedeo Peyron. A later pavilion by architect Ezio Venturelli and deputy director Alula Taibel housed the reptile house and aquarium.
Turin's city council approved a zoo in January 1955 on a private firm's proposal; it opened on 21 October 1955 in the Michelotti park, designed by engineer Gabriele Manfredi at a cost of 80 million lire. Vienna, Rome's mayor, and the zoos of Munich, Basel and Cologne donated animals. A reptile house and aquarium by Ezio Venturelli followed. The council voted to close it in February 1987, and it shut to the public on 29 March 1987.
The zoo's name and its 1955 founding by mayor Amedeo Peyron remain part of Borgo Po's local memory. The 1986 closure committee, chaired by Allegra Agnelli, included figures such as Norberto Bobbio, Gianni Vattimo and Armando Testa, and was backed by the newspaper Stampa Sera.
The former zoo area lies in the Michelotti park in Borgo Po, between Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I and Ponte Regina Margherita. After the 1987 closure the grounds were returned to the city; a 2015 plan for a private biopark on a thirty-year concession was abandoned in December 2017 when the winning firm withdrew. The area has long stood largely abandoned.
Before closure, the facility housed approximately 120 mammals, 800 birds, 100 reptiles, and 1,500 fish from various climate zones. This substantial collection was remarkable for its time and made it an important learning resource for zoology in northern Italy.
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