No one goes to Torino. Well, almost no one. That was driven home clearly as I was setting north from the beautiful Brunello-infused Tuscan town of Montalcino. The elegant Florentine owner of my AirBnb asked me where I was heading next….I told her without hesitation and with enthusiasm, Torino! She looked at me as if I had grown a second nose…total disbelief and she told me so. I am certain she thought I was “touched” as I drove away and to be honest, I was starting to believe it as well. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea…maybe I had done a little “too much” solitary research into the former royal city and had convinced myself, wrongly, that Torino was the place to be.
The problem places like Torino have is that they have to compete with other destination cities in Italy….Rome, Venice, Florence….the big three…chock full of ancient ruins and history, unique settings and art that people around the world flock to. I would put Torino in that list of second cities in Italy…..Bologna, Siena, Verona, Pisa, and many others. Their biggest problem is that they are in Italy….drop them anywhere else and they are a destination…but, in Italy, they are almost an afterthought. And if I am honest, Torino is on the bottom of the second tier of expectations….I mean, it is the “Detroit of Italy”.
But, Torino has something that the rest don’t have. At one point not too long ago, it was the Royal City of Italy and it has the bones to prove it. Expansive piazzas, majestic fountains, wide boulevards, and magnificent architecture are the vestiges of what was to be. Torino had been redesigned to reflect its Royal position and then, it was over. The Royal period of the House of Savoy in Italy faded and Torino faded as well…for a time. Instead, it became an industrial giant with names like Fiat and design houses like Pininfarina.
In the beginning though, it was a Roman settlement and that is reflected in the well preserved Palatine Towers, the northern gates to the city in Roman times. It’s location in the heart of what is now the Province of Piedmont, in the northwestern part of the Italian peninsula, contributed to it’s rich past through spatial proximation to the great powers of Europe. It’s annexation to the Duchy of Savoy in the 13th century started a long relationship with that Royal House that would stay intact for several hundred years; Torino was made the capital of the Duchy in the middle of the 15th century and starting with this period, many of the beautiful piazzas and the Royal Palace (Palazzo Reale) and the famous arcaded Via Po and Via Roma, along with other broad thoroughfares were constructed; essentially the city was redesigned to reflect this new found importance.
Torino stayed as the capital of the Duchy of Savoy with a few exceptions (the French under Napoleons III controlled it for a handful of years) until 1861 when the Kingdom of Italy (still actually the Duchy of Savoy) was formed out of various States on the Italian peninsula…..Torino was the first capital…….Italy, like Germany, is a surprisingly young country given its long and prominent history. Five years later, the Duchy of Savoy moved to Florence and in 1870, to Rome, after the Papal States were vanquished and brought in under the Italian Kingdom.
So, this is why I came to present day Torino…to see what remains of the Royal City that I had read so much about and imagined so vividly. What I found is a magnificent cityscape set along the upper reaches of the iconic Po River with Baroque palaces, expansive piazzas, impressive museums including the Risorgimento Museum dedicated to the the Unification of Italy and the Egyptian Museum which has one of the most impressive exhibitions of Egyptian antiquities of anywhere in the world. And then, there is the Shroud of Turin….you won’t see it but it has surprising pull here in spite of that reality. The Mole Antonelliana is a 550 foot brick structure (roughly the same height as the Washington Monument for comparative purposes) that dominates the Torino horizon and serves as the iconic symbol for the city which is odd given all the possible royal features that could have served that purpose. It originally started as a Synagogue but now is the National Museum of Cinema and given Italy’s long cinematic heritage, is a must see. And to top it off, just south of Parco del Valentino, an expansive green space along the Po, is the nod to the modern Torino….Museo Nazionale dell’ Automobile. It is in a magnificent modern purpose-built building and has some of the finest displays anywhere of Italian automobile design…I use that phrase because Italy really does approach their automobile heritage from a design-first point of view. This museum really does scratch the itch when it comes to automobile history and design and shows through excellent graphic displays how and why Torino became the center of automobile manufacturing in Italy. It’s just a fun place to spend an afternoon!
There are great accommodations ranging from grand hotels and more modest ones to modern apartments and AIrbnbs and the city has many fine restaurants and cocktail bars….Torino is the digestivo/aperitivo capital of the world in my estimation and the birthplace of names like Cinzano and Martini and Rossi and the fortified wine, Vermouth. The food from the Piedmont Region of Italy, of which Torino is the Capital, is such a delight….rich pastas like tajarin, succulent meats and truffles to top it off……debatably offering the finest cuisine and wines (Barolo and Barbaresco) in Italy. In less than two hours by car, you can be skiing in Courmayeur on the Italian side at the base of Mt Blanc….20 mins later through the Mt Blanc tunnel and you are skiing on at the French village of Chamonix…..a totally different experience, culture and cuisine….all within approximately two hours of Torino. As was true in the 15th Century is also true today…Torino’s proximity to the center of Western Europe makes it a natural hub to travel to and to serve as a base for your travels…..again, the reason the House of Savoy saw Torino as a natural capital.
What’s even more enjoyable though is that this is an honest city. It is a city that works….buses, a subway (a vestige of the 2006 Winter Olympics), trains and air travel…it is well connected. It is not a tourist city and doesn’t exist because of their largesse. Torino was and is, for dramatically different reasons, a city that existed because it had a purpose….a Royal city at first and now, an industrial center….but with a view of the Alps….again, this is not to be confused with Detroit…which….well…has a view of Windsor, Ontario. So, this is the little secret…..you should visit….an easy hour by Frecciarossa (Fast Train) from Milan but a totally different experience. Strolling down the Via Po or the Via Roma or the Via Garibaldi (the longest pedestrian street in Europe), you see the real Italy and it is magnificent in its own amazing, Royal way.