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Turin, Italy

Although it is often overlooked by visitors to Italy, Turin has much to offer – not least of which is the fact that there are fewer tourists. Turin (called Torino in Italian) is the capital of the Piedmont region in the northwest of Italy, and widely known as an excellent place to go if you’re a foodie or want to make skiing day trips.

It’s also home to one of the Catholic church’s most famous relics- the legendary Shroud of Turin. It was Turin that paved the way for Nutella. Turin has a beautiful city centre, is ringed by snow-capped mountains, and hosts an annual chocolate festival. The city is also home to perhaps the best museum of Egyptian artifacts anywhere outside of Egypt.



Rail Travel Times:

Milan to Turin: 45 mins



Plan and Book:





Turin: See and Do

Less than an hour from Milan by train, Turin is an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region. The city is located mainly on the western bank of the Po River, in front of Susa Valley and surrounded by the western Alpine arch and by the Superga Hill. Turin’s several monuments and sights made it one of the world’s top 250 tourist destinations, and the tenth most visited city in Italy in 2008.

The city has a rich culture and history, and is known for its numerous art galleries, restaurants, churches, palaces, opera houses, piazzas, parks, gardens, theatres, libraries, museums and other venues. Turin is well known for its renaissance, baroque, rococo, neo-classical, and art nouveau architecture. Much of the city’s public squares, castles, gardens and elegant palazzi such as Palazzo Madama, were built in the 16th to 18th century, after the capital of the Duchy of Savoy (later Kingdom of Sardinia) was moved to Turin from Chambery (now in France) as part of the urban expansion.

Turin is well known as the home of the Shroud of Turin, the football teams Juventus F.C. and Torino F.C., the headquarters of automobile manufacturers FIAT, Lancia and Alfa Romeo, and as host of the 2006 Winter Olympics.

Mole Antonelliana

One of Turin’s most conspicuous attractions is the Mole Antonelliana. Originally intended as a synagogue, the Mole is a tall nineteenth-century brick building topped by an aluminium spire; a strange edifice celebrated on Italy’s 2 cent coins. The building is home to the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Italy’s National Cinema Museum, which has many interesting displays and clips to watch and is well worth a visit. Little themed ‘booths’ around the central space are great fun when not over-run with schoolparties: you can watch romantic clips reclining on a bed, or comedy while sitting on toilet seats. A long spiralling walkway leads up the walls of the building: it doesn’t go anywhere but you can appreciate the architectural space and the light-shows.

A lift (ascensore) takes those with a good head for heights up to a lofty roof terrace. The glass lift ascends through the open central space of the building’s cinema museum before reaching the pinnacle. There are stupendous views over Turin from the open-air platform. Be prepared to queue for the lift.


Piazza Castello

Piazza Castello is the hotspot of tourist Turin, home to grand palaces such as Palazzo Reale, the royal palace of the Savoy dynasty, and Palazzo Madama, previously a castle, prison, barracks, senate house, and now a museum (under restoration). The piazza is an attractive central spot, there are lots of benches around the square, making it a good place to rest from sightseeing.


Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist and the Turin Shroud

One of the only disappointments for visitors is that you can’t see the Turin shroud. The shroud is a length of linen cloth bearing the image of a man, is believed by some Christians to be the burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, although three radiocarbon dating tests in 1988 dated a sample of the cloth to the Middle Ages. Although it is housed in the city’s Duomo – when not being subjected to testing – the shroud is currently kept safely locked up.

A large photograph is the nearest you can get to examining the shadowy impressions. The Catholic Church has neither formally endorsed nor rejected the shroud, but in 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. Pope John Paul II called the Shroud “a mirror of the Gospel”.

The charming cathedral itself comes as a refreshing Renaissance surprise after all the ‘Liberty-style’ grandeur of Turin, while from its steps you can see the ruins of Roman Turin. The church in fact lies in the place where the theatre of the ancient Roman city was located. It was built during 1491-98 and is adjacent to an earlier campanile built in 1470. Designed by Guarino Guarini, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud (the current resting place of the Shroud of Turin) was added to the structure in 1668-94.


Museo Egizio

One of Turin’s best museums is the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum), reckoned to be the best collection of Egyptian artefacts outside Cairo, consiting of more than 30,000 artefacts. Many displays are extremely well-presented, with texts in English. There are fascinating reconstructions of burial chambers, and plenty of mummies to delight the macabre imaginations of children. The Egyptian Museum owns three different versions of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, including the most ancient copy known.

The building itself was remodelled in celebration of the 2006 Winter Olympics, with its main rooms redesigned by Dante Ferretti, and “featured an imaginative use of lighting and mirrors in a spectacular display of some of the most important and impressive Pharaonic statues in the museum collection.

The museum had its original with the Savoy family who had been dabbling in Ancient Egyptian knick-knacks since the 16th century when it acquired the Mensa Isiaca, a bronze tablet with hieroglyphic inscriptions that stirred up the Renaissance appetite for mummy lore (though it was later revealed to be a Roman copy). The fledgling collection was given a huge boost in 1824 when Carlo Felice bought up the Egyptian hoard of Bernardino Drovetti, a resourceful piemontese who had used his position as French consul in Cairo to amass the world’s biggest private collection of Egyptian artefacts.

Basilica of Superga

A popular destination for Turin’s visitors, Superga is the basilica on the hill which dominates views from the town. Built to celebrate successful deliverance from siege, the church became the resting place for the Savoy royals and achieved greater notoriety in the twentieth century as the site of the tragic aeroplane crash which killed the great Torino football team. The Basilica of Superga was built from 1717 to 1731 for Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, at the top of the hill of Superga, to fulfill a vow the duke (and future King of Sardinia) had made during the Battle of Turin. It contains the tombs of many of the princes and kings of the House of Savoy, including the Monument to Carlo Emanuele III (1733) by Ignazio Collino and his brother Filippo. Under the church are the tombs of the Savoy family, including most of its members.



Original 1934 tram cars take you on rickety tracks up the 3,100 metres to the top. You can walk, but the train is the fun and more unconventional way to get there. It is a cheap ride and can be a bit bumpy and noisy but that is only to be expected for such a fun journey back in time. The electric trams leave every hour on the hour between 9am and 8pm, and until midnight on Tuesdays.

Parco del Valentino

The Parco del Valentino is Turin’s Hyde Park: the place where this most grid-planned and car-dependent of Italian cities comes to sprawl on the grass, canoodle, jog, walk the dog or just get a breath of fresh air. Its centrepiece, the handsome Castello del Valentino, a 16th-century Savoy residence, is off limits to visitors because it now houses the Architecture Faculty of the Politecnico di Torino. But there are plenty of other corners of this riverside park that are worth exploring, from the Orto Botanico, founded by Vittorio Amedeo II in 1729 as a garden of medicinal herbs, to the Giardino Roccioso, a green declivity which in 1961 was turned into an Alpine-style area of rocky rills spanned by little wooden bridges.

Address: Orto Botanico, viale PA Mattioli 25 (00 39 011 661 2447).



Parco del Valentino’s highlight, if only for its curiosity value, is the bizarre Borgo Medievale. This is a life-size reconstruction of a rural Piedmontese village from the 15th century, complete with drawbridges and crenellated towers, which has provided a wedding-photo backdrop for generations of torinesi. It was built for a long-forgotten Expo in 1884 and houses some surprisingly worthwhile craft workshops. Open Sat, Sun, April-Sept, 9am-1pm, 3pm-7pm. Borgo Medievale, viale Virgilio 107 (011 443 1701) – Open 9am-8pm daily.


The National Automobile Museum

The Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile (The National Automobile Museum), founded by Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia, is an automobile museum in Turin, northern Italy. The museum displays almost 200 cars. The museum’s collection includes the first Italian cars, a Bernardi from 1896 and a Fiat from 1899, a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost from 1914, and racing cars by Ferrari and Alfa Romeo. Also included are for instance an 1893 Benz Victoria, an 1894 Peugeot, a 1904 Oldsmobile, the 1907 Itala from the Peking to Paris race, a 1913 De Dion-Bouton, a 1916 Ford T and the 1929 Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8A that starred in Sunset Boulevard.

The Museum has a new look, thanks to a modern, innovative design: this is not just a simple architectural renovation, but a new amenity redesigned to be placed among the most cutting-edge of European cultural centres.


Centro Storico, Fiat

Opened in 1963, the Centro Storico Fiat (Fiat Historic Centre) is located in an Art Nouveau building that was the first extension (1907) of the Dante workshops where the Italian car manufacturer was born. From the beginning it has been the scene of important moments in the history of Fiat, which makes it appropraite to now be home to a collection of cars, memorabilia, models and posters of artists covering the entire history of the company.

The exhibitions, in which you can come across engines for ships, bicycles, refrigerators and washing machines ‘targati’ Fiat, winds through the reconstruction of some establishments symbol of corporate history and changes in the way the company has worked.

Address: Via Gabriele Chiabrera, 20, 10126 Trurin. Ph: +39 011 006 6240


Pininfarina Museum

The exhibition space presents the evolution of the work of the Pininfarina design company from its foundation to present day, an history always focused on design quality. The most important automobiles designed in Pinifarina’s history are exhibited, from the Cisitalia and the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider to the Sigma Grand Prix and the Maserati Birdcage 75th. The core section of the collection has a new layout provided with iconographic panels and multimedia exhibits. Visits must be booked in advance and are allowed for groups of at least 5 people.

Address: Via Nazionale 30 – 10020 Cambiano (Turin). Contact: Public Relations Manager. +011 39 011 9438104


Old Fiat factory rooftop test track

The Lingotto building in suburban Lingotto is a former Fiat motor vehicle factory, but what makes it unique is that it was built with a test track on its roof. Construction started in 1916 and the building opened in 1923. The design was unusual in that it had five floors, with raw materials going in at the ground floor, and cars built on a line that went up through the building. Finished cars emerged at rooftop level to go onto the test track. It was the largest car factory in the world at that time. For its time, the Lingotto building was avante-garde, influential and impressive – Le Corbusier called it “one of the most impressive sights in industry”, and “a guideline for town planning”. 80 different models of car were produced there in its lifetime, including the Fiat Topolino of 1936.

The original Lingotto rooftop test track features briefly in the getaway sequence in the film The Italian Job (1969). The Lingotto building is featured extensively in the Alberto Lattuada film Mafioso (1962). The Building and test track was featured on the first episode of James May’s Cars of the People.





The factory became outmoded in the 1970s and the decision was made to finally close it in 1982. An architectural competition was held, resulting in the old factory being turned into a modern complex, with concert halls, theatre, a convention centre, shopping arcades and a hotel. It also houses the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli art collection. The track was retained, and can still be visited today on the top floor of the shopping mall and hotel.

The test track is not easy to find, but if you follow these instructions, you’ll have no problems. Enter the Lingotto building via any entrance and head to the 1st floor, which is the ‘8 Gallery’ shopping mall. Head for the UCI cinema or follow the red arrows on the floor for the ‘Pinacoteca Agnelli’. Behind the cinema you will find the entrance to the Pinacoteca gift shop/bookshop – head for the lift inside the store and go up to the 4th floor gallery – tickets must be purchased for access to the test track. Once on the roof the view is spectacular.

Address: Lingotto building, Via Nizza, Lingotto. This building is located just a stone’s throw away from Torino Lingotto railway station, which is served by a number of regional train lines, as well as the Turin Metro.


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