This Europe: A paranormal, a seer, a wizard - or a world-class fraud?

He was born amid wealth and splendour, the son of a grand banker of Turin; he obtained a law degree from Turin University, one in economics in London and a third in biology in Paris. But Gustav Adolfo Rol was no lawyer, economist or biologist. He was a seer, a wizard, a world-class paranormal, or a world-class fraud; take your pick.

As Turin this week pays its respects to the man styled "the most famous psychic in the world", born 100 years ago, with an exhibition and a conference, the debate is as lively as ever. With his bald head and dark, sunken, penetrating eyes, Rol looked as if he had stepped from a Gothic tale by Edgar Allan Poe. He immured himself in his ancient Turin home among crystal chandeliers, neo-classical nudes, heavy imperial furniture and the antiquarian treasures to which he devoted his life after retiring from banking at 34, like Roderick Usher before the fall.

His paranormal feats, attested by hundreds of devotees, were astonishing: he passed through closed doors and walls, could read any book in a library without removing it from the shelf and read people's minds. "He is in Turin," shouted a newspaper headline in the 1970s, "but people take pictures of him in New York." He never allowed a professional magician to witness his feats, he never took money for them, he never let them be filmed, proof to the believers of his authenticity, but to the sceptics merely the prudent precautions of a careful fraudster.

"All of his 'phenomena' can be reproduced using the techniques of we illusionists," a professional conjuror, Mariano Tomatis, claimed this week.

But during Rol's lifetime - he died, aged 91, in 1994 - many fell under his spell. Mussolini met him secretly during visits to Turin and Federico Fellini called him "the most disconcerting man I ever met".

President Charles De Gaulle would have nothing to do with him. "That man reads minds," he said. "We cannot risk French state secrets becoming known to foreigners."