Antonelli had recently added a 121 metre-high dome and spire to the seventeenth-century Basilica of San Gaudenzio in Novara and promised to build a synagogue for 280,000 lire.
According to art historian Robert Hughes, the painting draws inspiration from one of the spectacular architectural landmarks of Turin, the Mole Antonelliana.
mole | Mole | Adrian Mole | Mole (animal) | European mole | Whac-A-Mole | The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ | Naked mole rat | Môle-Saint-Nicolas | Mole Hunt | Mole Antonelliana | Eastern mole | Chris Mole | Somali golden mole | Saul of the Mole Men | mole (unit) | Mole Skink | Mole's Christmas | Môle-Saint-Nicolas Arrondissement | Mole rat | mole (intelligence) | Mole (disambiguation) | Mole (architecture) | mole (animal) | Miff Mole | Mathieu Molé | Matching Mole's Little Red Record | Matching Mole | Louis-Mathieu Molé | C-mole |
City Hall has been the world's tallest masonry building since the 1953 collapse of the pinnacle of the Mole Antonelliana in Turin.