Derby della Mole

The Derby della Mole is the local derby played out between Turin's most prominent football clubs, Juventus and Torino. It is also known as the Derby di Torino or the Turin Derby in English. It is named after the Mole Antonelliana, a major landmark in the city and the architectural symbol of the Piedmontese capital. It is the oldest ongoing meeting between two teams based in the same city in Italian football.

The match between the two clubs represented until the First World War the juxtaposition of two opposing social classes. Juventus, founded in 1897 by students of a prestigious high school in Turin, soon became akin to the bourgeois in the town especially after enduring bond with the Agnelli family, which began in 1923, during which time they were also supported by the aristocracy of the region. Torino instead was born in 1906 from a division within Juventus, at the hands of dissidents who joined forces with another team from the city, Football Club Torinese, who identified with the then-early industrial world. In the 1960s and 1970s, these differences had eased considerably, partly as a result of the great migration to Turin about forty years earlier, but did not disappear: Juventus has since transcended its status as the symbol of the bourgeois and elite class to become a global phenomenon while Torino still largely retains an exclusively local fanbase.

The colours of the two teams also contribute, in small part, to this distinction: the Bianconeri, originally pink and black, adopted their jerseys from Notts County all the way from England, while the Granata dusted off the colours of the "Brigade Savoia", that two centuries earlier had liberated the then capital of the Duchy of Savoy. Both clubs, however, featured within their emblems a raging bull, taken from the city's coat of arms: Juventus as a bond with their origins, while Torino adopted it as their identity. It was the case until 2017 when Juventus introduced a J-shaped logo and featured the bull no longer.

The Turin derby was first played on 13 January 1907. It was also the first competitive match of Torino after its founding on 3 December 1906. The rivalry stems from the fact that Torino was founded through a merger of Football Club Torinese and a group of Juventus dissidents, led by major financier Alfred Dick. It is said that prior to the first derby, Dick was locked inside the changing room, causing him to miss the game and having to listen to updates via players and staff.

Since then, the derby has not been played in Serie A thirteen times: twelve due to Torino being in Serie B, and once after Juventus were relegated following the 2006 Italian football scandal. In addition to the derby against the Granata, the Bianconeri have played many derbies in the top flight with other city teams that no longer exist such as R.S. Ginnastica Torino, Sport Club Audace Torino and Football Club Pastore. In the first two editions of the Italian football championship, the original derbies of Turin were the ones played between Torinese, Ginnastica Torino and Internazionale Torino, before the latter merged with Torinese in 1900.

Before World War II, the rivalry between the two clubs came to represent a class divide in the Piedmont region. The fans of Torino originally represented the proletariat, while Juventus the bourgeoisie. However, with the mass migration to Turin, a major industrial center of northern Italy, in the 1960s and 1970s, the social difference had already diminished considerably. Many blue-collar workers arrived from southern Italy and took up employment with the Agnelli family, the owners of FIAT; thus, they started to see Juventus as "the team of the boss" or the "team of Fiat", and became fans. Torino would stand to represent the "original" spirit of Piedmont, or the purest Torinesità and to this day, it draws its supporters from a predominantly local fanbase, compared to Juventus, which enjoys widespread support even outside of Italy. Today, the differences remain, even if they are less prominent, due to Torino regularly teetering between Serie A and Serie B since the second half of the 1990s.

As of 28 February 2023, Juventus have won the derby 110 times and Torino have won it 73 times. Despite the overall results of the derby generally in favor of Juventus, historically, there have been periods where Torino have prevailed; between 1912 and 1914, in the space of three encounters, Torino submerged Juventus under a heavy "coat" of 23 goals—in which Juventus suffered its heaviest defeat in history, an 0–8 result on 17 November 1912, and especially during the 1940s, thanks to the team led by Valentino Mazzola, known as the Grande Torino. The end of the twenties signaled a period of early dominance of Juventus, who had just passed under the Agnelli, and left their rivals with only three victories in twenty matches; subsequently, the Superga tragedy of 1949 and the consequent technical impoverishment of Torino, was followed by a period more favourable for Juventus in the 1950s, culminating in the derby of 20 April 1952, won 6–0.

The 1970s witnessed the revival of Torino, when Juventus remained without a win in the derby for nearly six years (from December 1973 to March 1979) and Torino established a record of 4 wins in a row in a single championship (1975–76). Coinciding with Torino's economic difficulties (especially at the end of the 1990s), Juventus inflicted heavy defeats (5–0 of 3 December 1995). Recent history has seen a marked dominance of Juventus, so much so that Torino's 2–1 victory on 26 April 2015 was their first derby success in twenty years.