Cinema Statuto fire
1983 movie theatre fire in Turin, Italy
Cinema Statuto was a movie theater located in Turin, Italy, when on 13 February 1983, at 18:15, during the projection of La Chèvre, a fire caused the death of 64 people as a result of smoke inhalation. According to statements by Raimondo Capella, the owner of the cinema, the flames spread from an old curtain. This was the largest disaster to have occurred after World War II in Turin.
Fire
At the time of the fire there were over 400 people in the theater. In February 2018 Barbara Guaschetti, one of the survivors, stated that the spectators sitting in the lower hall managed to escape through the main entrance and the only emergency exit at the ground floor that was not closed and locked. The owner of the cinema, Raimondo Capella, claimed that he and some employees attempted to put out the fires with fire extinguishers but were unable to do so and began opening exit doors and evacuating patrons. However, as remembered by one of the firefighters who was on the scene, they had to force open the emergency exits on the first floor because they were all locked.
Most of the victims were among the viewers sitting in the upper Gallery who did not realize what was happening till it was too late. The owner of the cinema did not turn the emergency lights on and did not stop the screening because he feared "a wave of panic." Those in the balcony who had tried to reach the stairs found that the only way out was already blocked by flames, others fled to the toilets and died there. A few bodies were found still seated.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3677176. Authority coordinates are 45.078, 7.666. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cinema Statuto fire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.