Turin

An elegant Piedmontese city where Nietzsche spent his last months of lucidity in 1888, writing at furious speed, until one January morning he collapsed in the Piazza Carlo Alberto and wrote nothing coherent again.

Turin is an aristocratic Piedmontese city of long arcaded streets and the Alps visible at the end of every corridor. In the autumn of 1888, Nietzsche arrived and experienced his last months of clarity. He walked the streets exhilarated, ate well, wrote at extraordinary speed — five books in one year — and felt for the first time that he was healthy and understood. On January 3, 1889, he collapsed in the Piazza Carlo Alberto, threw his arms around the neck of a horse being beaten, and lost consciousness. He never produced a coherent sentence again. Turin is where the most productive and then the most terrible thing happened in Nietzsche's life, within five months.