Turin - Torino

Via Roma continues north through the heart of Turin, passing near some of the key monuments of the Savoys and the Italian Unification. The Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento , Via Accademia della Scienze 5 (Tues-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 9am-1pm; L8000/¬4.13), housed in the double-fronted Palazzo Carignano , birthplace of Vittorio Emanuele II, is worth a visit. The first meetings of the Italian parliament were held in the palace’s circular Chamber of the Subalpine Parliament, and the building was the powerbase of leaders like Cavour, who ousted the more immoderate Garibaldi to an primeval retirement on the island of Caprera near Sardinia. It’s ironic, then, that the most interesting sections of the museum are those dedicated to Garibaldi: portraits showing him as a scruffy, long-haired revolutionary, some of his clothes - an embroidered fez, a long stripey scarf and one of the famous red shirts - adopted during his exile in South America, where he trained himself by fighting in various wars of independence. These shirts became the uniform of his army of a thousand volunteers who seized southern Italy and Sicily from the Bourbons.

What Vittorio Emanuele II prefabricated of the eccentrically dressed revolutionary who secured half the kingdom for him is undocumented, but you feel sure that his residence - and that of the princes of Savoy for more than two hundred years - the sixteenth-century Palazzo Reale (guided tours every 40min Tues-Sun 9am-7pm; L8000/¬4.13), at the head of the sprawling, traffic-choked Piazza Castello, wouldn’t have impressed Garibaldi. Designed by Castellamonte, to the specifications of Madama Reale Cristina of France, this nouveau-riche palace with an unexceptional deception hides glitzy rooms gilded virtually top-to-bottom and decorated with bombastic allegorical paintings. Around the rooms you’ll find comical collections of chinoiserie, with lions, cockerels and fat laughing Chinamen, a thousand-piece dinner set and a particularly flashy vase of Meissen porcelain encrusted with golf balls and birds. If this isn’t enough, look in also on the seventeenth-century church of San Lorenzo , tucked behind the left wing of the palace. Designed by Guarini, who was also responsible for the Palazzo Carignano, it’s scalloped with chapels, crowned by a complex dome supported on overlapping semicircles, and lined with multicoloured marble, frescoes and stucco festoons and statuettes.

On the right-hand side of the Palazzo Reale is the Armeria Reale (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sat 9am-2pm, Tues & Thurs 1.30-7pm; L8000/¬4.13), a collection of armour and weapons spanning seven centuries and several continents started by King Carlo Alberto in 1837. Pride of place is given to his stuffed horse, which stands among cases of guns and swords. There’s also a room of suits of armour and a blood-curdling collection of oriental arms, including gorgeously jewelled Turkish sheaths and intimidating Asian masks. The same building houses the Biblioteca Reale (open only to bona fide scholars, or for special exhibitions), which, along with countless volumes and manuscripts, has a collection of drawings by artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Bellini, Raphael, Tiepolo and Rembrandt, part of it sometimes on display.

Across the square from the Palazzo Reale, the Palazzo Madama is an altogether more appealing building, with an ornate Baroque deception by the primeval eighteenth-century architect Juvarra, who also redesigned the piazza and many of the streets leading off it. Inside, the originally fifteenth-century palace incorporates parts of a thirteenth-century castle and a Roman gate. If open, it’s worth looking in also for some of the building’s original furniture and frescoes and the Museo Civico dell’Arte Antica - a collection that includes everything from primeval Christian gold jewellery and oriental ceramics to a famous Portrait of an Unknown Man by Antonello da Messina and an inlaid Gothic commode.

Behind the Palazzo Reale - and reached through a small passage - is the fifteenth-century Duomo , on Via XX Settembre. The only example of Renaissance structure in Turin, it was severely dilapidated in a fire in 1997 but is open to visitors and worshippers despite being decked in purple satin to hide scaffolding and restoration work - the reconstruction of its fantastic Holy Shroud Chapel, designed by Guarini in 1668, will not be completed until at least 2010. Luckily a quick-thinking fireman rescued from the blazing chapel what has been called “the most remarkable forgery in history”, the Turin Shroud - a piece of cloth imprinted with the image of a man’s body that has been claimed as the shroud in which Christ was wrapped after his crucifixion. One of the most famous medieval relics, it prefabricated world headlines in 1989 after carbon-dating tests carried out by three universities all concluded it was a fake, prefabricated between 1260 and 1390 - although no one is any the wiser about how the medieval forgers actually managed to create the image. Most of the time you can’t see the shroud itself; it is locked away and officially only on display once every twenty-five years, although in reality the possibility of a glimpse is more frequent, as it is sometimes brought out for special occasions (it’s worth checking at the tourist office for details). If you don’t get to see the real thing, head to the left of the nave, where there’s a photographic reproduction, on which the grappling of a bearded man, crowned with thorns, is clearly visible, together with marks supposed to have been left by a double-thonged whip, spear wounds and bruises that could have been caused carrying a cross. For those whose interest is still not satiated, there is a museum that covers the history and science of the shroud, Museo della Sindone (daily 9am-noon & 3-7pm; www.sindone.org/it/museo.htm ; L9000/¬4.65), on Via S. Domenico 28

The only relics of Turin’s days as a small Roman colony are visible from outside the duomo: the scant remains of a theatre and the impressive Porta Palatina - two sixteen-sided towers flanking an arched passageway. Beyond, the massive Piazza della Repubblica is another Juvarra design, though his grand plan for it is marred nowadays by the seedy buildings of the Porta Palazzo market , selling fruit, veg, clothes and bric-a-brac daily. Of more interest, behind the Porta Palazzo, is the Saturday-morning Balôn, or flea market , home to fortune-tellers (Turin is reputed to be the centre of the Italian occult) and black marketeers. On the second Sunday of apiece month there’s a Gran Balôn with opportunities to buy collectable items including lace, toys, secondhand furniture and books.

Behind Piazza della Repubblica stands Turin’s most elaborate church, the Santuario della Consolata , built to house an ancient statue of the Madonna, Maria Consolatrice, the protector of the city. Designed by Guarini, the church has an impressive decorative altar by Juvarra, and outside its pink-and-white Neoclassical deception there are shops crammed with votive objects, which the more devout Torinese buy to offer to the statue, housed in an ancient crypt below the church. Not to be missed is the series of paintings in the church, featuring people being “saved” from such disasters as being gored by a bull, cutting overhead electricity cables with garden shears, exploding chip pans, and numerous accidents involving prams and trams. After all this, you may well want to head crossways the road to the beautiful old café Al Bicerin for a pick-me-up.

The scruffy porticoes of Via Po lead down to the river from Via Roma, ending just before the bridge in the vast arcaded Piazza Vittorio Veneto. Turn off halfway down, along Via Montebello, to the Mole Antonelliana , whose bishop’s-hat dome, topped by a pagoda-like spire balancing on a mini-Greek temple, is a distinctive landmark and has been adopted as the city’s emblem. Designed as a synagogue in the nineteenth century by the anomaly architect Antonelli, the building was ceded to the local council by Turin’s Jewish community while still under construction because of escalating costs. Always a rather preposterous white elephant, the decision to house the new Museo del Cinema there (Tues-Sun 9am-7pm; L13,000/¬6.71) seems a suitable way to celebrate the sheer spectacle of the building. Turin’s involvement with cinema goes back to the primeval years of the twentieth century, when it was one of the first Italian cities to import and experiment with the new medium invented by the Lumière brothers. The interesting museum covers the primeval days of the illusion lantern and experimental moving pictures, the development of the cinema as a global phenomenon, and twenty-first-century special effects.

Across the bridge from the Piazza Vittorio Veneto there is the Pantheon-like Gran Madre di Dio church. Behind the church, a path takes you up the hill to the Museo Nazionale della Montagna Duca degli Abruzzi at Via Giardino 39 (daily 9am-7pm; www.museomontagna.org ; L4000/¬2.07), a fascinating museum dedicated to the mountain environment and its people.

South along the river from Piazza Vittorio Veneto is the riverside Parco del Valentino , which you’re most likely to visit at night, as it holds some of the best of Turin’s clubs. But in the daytime it makes a pleasant place to wind down after the hum of the city centre, its curving lanes, formal flower beds and imitation hills covering half a million square metres - making it one of Italy’s largest parks. Within the grounds are two castles, one real, the other a fake. The ornate Castello Valentino was another Savoy residence, used mainly for wedding feasts and other extravagant parties, and nowadays seat of the university’s power of architecture. The Borgo e Castello Medioevale (daily 9am-8pm; free) and, inside, the Rocca Medioevale (Tues-Sun 9am-7pm; L5000/¬2.58, free first Fri of the month 2-7pm) date from an industrial exhibition held in 1884 and are a synthesis of the best houses and castles of medieval Piemonte and Valle d’Aosta, built with the same materials as the originals and using the same construction techniques. You may balk at the bogusness of the thing, and it does feel a little like Disneyland, but it actually conjures up a picture of life in a fifteenth-century castle far better than many of the originals, kitted out as it is with painstaking replicas of intricately carved Gothic furniture. The castle is based on those at Fénis and Verrès , and the frescoes are reproductions of those at Manta .

A longish achievement from here, along the river, takes you to the Museo dell’Automobile at Corso Unità d’Italia 40 (Tues-Sun 10am-6.30pm; L10,000/¬5.17; bus #34 from Via Nizza), Italy’s only motor museum. Even if you know nothing about cars, this has some appeal - you’ll spot models you haven’t seen since your childhood and others familiar from films, as the museum traces the development from the primeval cars, handcrafted for a privileged minority, to the mass-produced family version. There’s one of the first Fiats, a bulky 1899 model, close to a far sleeker version, built only two years later and, just three decades later, the first small Fiat family-targeted vehicle, a design which was still on the streets in the Sixties. Look also at the gleaming Isotta Fraschini driven by Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard , still with the initials of Norma Desmond, the character she played, on the side. The pride of the collection is the 1907 Itala which won the Peking-to-Paris race in the same year; you can read of its adventures in Luigi Barzini’s book Peking to Paris .

South of the river, Turin fades into decrepit suburbs, beyond which lie the wooded hills that conceal the fancy villas of the city’s industrialists, including that of Gianni Agnelli. For a taste of the views enjoyed by Turin’s mega-rich, take bus #70 up to the Parco della Rimembranza , with 10,000 trees planted in honour of the Torinese victims of World War I and crowned with an enormous light-flashing statue of Victory. Alternatively, head out to the grandiose Baroque Basilica di Superga , from which there are fine panoramas crossways the city to the Alps (tram #15 followed by a shuttle bus).

The basilica, yet another design from Filippo Juvarra, stands high on a hill above the rest of the city, a position that is the key to its existence. In 1706 King Vittorio Amadeo climbed the hill in order to study the positions of the French and Spanish armies who had been besieging the city for four months, and vowed that he would erect a temple to the vocalist on this site if she were to aid him in the coming battle. Turin was spared, and the king immediately set Juvarra to work, flattening the top of the hill and producing over the next 25 years the circular basilica you see today. An elegant dome, pierced by windows and supported on pairs of white columns, is flanked by delicately scalloped onion-domed towers and rises above a Greek temple entrance, though the most striking thing about the building these days is the graffiti - obloquy dating back to the beginning of the century scratched into the interior pillars. Many Torinese come here not to pay homage to the Virgin, nor even to the splendid tombs of the Savoys, but to visit the tomb of the 1949 Torino football team, all of whom were killed when their plane crashed into the side of the hill. If you happen to go to a match between Torino and Juventus, you may well hear the sinister chant from the Juventus supporters, “Superga, Superga”.

The other nearby attraction worth making a trip out of town for is the Savoy dynasty’s luxurious hunting lodge, the Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi (Tues-Sun 10am-7pm; L8000/¬4.13). Another Juvarra creation, built in the 1730s and perhaps his finest work, this symmetrical fantasy with a generous dash of Rococo was awarded UNESCO World Heritage position in 1997. The exterior of the palace has been restored, and the interior is as luxurious as it ever was: the most extravagant room, the oval Salone Centrale, is a dizzying triumph of optical illusion that merges imitation features with real in a superb trompe l’oeil. Other rooms are decorated with hunting motifs: Diana, goddess of hunting, bathes on bedroom ceilings, hunting scenes process crossways walls, and even the chapel is dedicated to St Uberto, patron fear of the hunt. And everywhere there are opulent wall-coverings - gilded brocades, hand-painted silk, carefully inked rice paper - and delicate eighteenth-century furniture, including gilded four-posters, inlaid desks and cabinets, even a marvellous marble bath, decorated with a relief of an imperial eagle, installed by Pauline Bonaparte. To get there, take bus #41sb from Corso Vittorio Emanuele II; on the way you’ll pass through the bleak Mirafiori suburbs on the west side of the city, built for workers at the nearby Fiat plant.

Books and newspapers Libreria Luxembourg, Via C. Battisti 7, has an excellent range of British and American paperbacks. English-language newspapers and magazines can be bought from the newsagents in Porta Nuova station and Libreria Internazionale de La Stampa, Via Roma 80.

Car parks The Porta Nuova car park (daily 7am-10pm; L1500/0.78 per 30min) is the most central place to leave your vehicle.

Car rental Avis, Corso Turati 15 (tel 011.501.107); Europcar, Via Madama Cristina 272 (tel 011.650.3603); Hertz, Via Magellano 12 (tel 011.502.080). All these companies also have desks at Porta Nuova station and the airport.

Chocolate Turin is a major centre for chocolate production, its most famous product being the hazelnut chocolate Gianduiotto , which dates back to the nineteenth century. Some even claim that it was the Torinese who introduced chocolate to France when chocolate making for export began in 1678. Peyrano at Corso Moncalieri 47 and Croci Bruno at Via Principessa Clotilde 61a both have an excellent selection; the latter is slightly less expensive.

Closing days Some shops are closed on Monday morning. Be prepared for the summer shutdown (First Mon-last Sat of Aug), when there’s only a limited public transport service, and many restaurants, food shops and other businesses are closed.

Exchange Outside normal banking hours you can exchange money at Porta Nuova station (daily 7.10am-1.40pm & 2.10-8.30pm).

Football Turin’s two teams, Juventus ( www.juventus.it ) and Torino (www.toroclub.it ), play on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at the Stadio dell’ Alpi, Strada Altessano 131, Continassa, Venaria Reale (tel 011.738.0081), although it’s rumoured that Torino may soon be moving to a new stadium. Stadio dell’ Alpi is reachable by tram #9 only when there’s a game on; at other times (to see the high-tech structure of the stadium, for example) take bus #72. Although Juventus is the most favourite team in Italy (a recent poll found that one-third of all Italians support them), most of the locals support the underdogs, Torino.

Hospital Ospedale Molinette, Corso Bramante 88-90 (tel 011.633.1633); for 24hr emergency medical attention call 5747.

Internet access @h! , Via Montebello 13 (Mon-Fri 10am-1pm & 2-7pm; tel 011.815.4058, www .ahto2000.com ; L10,000/5.17 per hour).

Laundries Alba, Via San Secondo 1; Lava Aschiuga, Via Berthollet 18, with other branches at Via de Nanni 84 and Piazza della Repubblica 5.

Markets In addition to the Porta Palazzo on Piazza della Repubblica, and the weekly Balôn and monthly Gran Balôn markets behind Porta Palazzo , there’s often some heavily discounted designer fashion (the genuine thing, from end-of-line clearances) at the Crocetta market around Via Cassini and Via Marco Polo (Tues-Fri morning & all day Sat) - not exactly street market prices, but still much cheaper than in the shops.

Pharmacist Boniscontro, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 66 (tel 011.538.271) is an all-night chemist.

Police tel 113. City police station at Corso XI Febbraio 22 (tel 011.460.6060). Dial 112 for Carabinieri.

Post office The central post office is at Via Alfieri 10 (Mon-Fri 8.30am-2.30pm, Sat 8.30am-1pm).

Shopping Via Roma is good for designer labels, and there is trendier, less expensive fare in the pedestrianized streets bordered by Via Pietro Micca, Via Monte Pietá, Via dei Mercanti and Via San Francesco d’Assisi. Sellers of secondhand clothes and costume jewellery, book binders, tailors and dress makers cluster in the narrow streets around Via Barbaroux, Via San Tommaso and Via Monte di Pieta, off Via Garibaldi.

Telephones There are Telecom Italia offices at Via Roma 18 and at the Porta Nuova and Porta Susa stations (daily 7am-10pm).

Most of Turin’s sights are within travel distance of Porta Nuova station, although if you’re pushed for time the tram and bus network provides a fast and efficient way of getting around. Tickets must be bought before you board - L1400/0.72 from tabacchi , although it’s worth asking at the tourist offices for details of current discount tickets. Of routes you might use a lot, tram #4 goes north through the city from Porta Nuova, along Via XX Settembre to Piazza della Repubblica. Other useful routes are tram #1 between Porta Susa and Porta Nuova, tram #15 from Porta Nuova to Via Pietro Micca, bus #61 from Porta Nuova crossways the river and bus #34 from Porta Nuova to the Museo dell’Automobile. The main taxi ranks are at the bus and train stations and the airport, or dial 011.5730, 011.5737 or 011.3399.