The city was founded in 29-28 B.C., with the name of Augusta Taurinorum, as a border town and camp for ancient Rome under the Emperor, Augustus. During the Risorgimento (Italian Unification) period, between 1861 and 1864, it became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy and began to display its growing industrial vocation. It was during this period that the traditional urban layout was abandoned: Turin’s old roman colony layout was modified, replaced by a fan-like arrangement, with the creation of the first working class districts, outside the customs walls.
However, contrary to what people often assume, Turin is not just a modern industrial city. It has centuries of history behind it and has left us with testimonies of superlative historic and artistic interest.
Why not come along and discover some of the most interesting and original aspects of a region and a city where tourist development has hardly begun, where there is still room for delightful and unexpected surprises?
The historic centre is a true open air museum, comprising delightful testimonies dating back more than 2000 years, with splendid baroque architecture and the Risorgimento …… from the Porte Palatine of the old roman Augusta Taurinorum, to the fifteenth century Cathedral of San Giovanni, which hosts the Holy Shroud, from the baroque Church of San Lorenzo, to Palazzo Reale dei Savoia and the Basilica of Superga, from the Egyptian Museum, which boasts one of the most significant collections in the world, after that in Cairo, to Palazzo Reale, a majestic seventeenth century construction (residence of the Dukes of Savoy, Kings of Sardinia and the Kings of Italy until 1865), from the Hunting Palace of Stupinigi, with its park and extensive surrounding land and built to a design by Juvarra (today the site of the Museum of Art and Furniture, hosting furniture items, paintings and objects of outstanding quality, reflecting the Palace’s original decor, together with that of other Savoy Residences), to Rivoli Castle, an imposing baroque building, now the site of the Museum of Contemporary Art, to Venaria Reale Castle, the summer residence of the Savoy family (taken as an inspirational model for the realisation of Versailles) started in the seventeenth century at the command of Duke Carlo Emanuele II, to the Museum of the Risorgimento, where, inside, in 1848, Carlo Alberto ordered construction of the Chamber of Deputies for the Kingdom of Sardinia (Subalpine Parliament), a feature which can still be seen, or the Museum of the Motor Car, which documents the evolution of motor vehicles from the earliest days to the 1980s, with a display of more than 150 original vehicles, accompanied by models, prints, manifestos and designs from the period, to the Museum of Cinema, located within the Mole Antonelliana, symbolic monument of the city of Turin. The city also enjoys a leading place in Europe as regards the beauty and size of its parks: from the central Royal Gardens, to the park around the Hunting Palace of Stupinigi, to the Mandria Park, which contains the Reggia della Venaria Reale, and all the lush green areas along the banks of the River Po.
A splendid European city, which stretches out with its kilometres of porticoes, tree-lined avenues and galleries, where it is possible to linger awhile, inside old cafes, perfectly preserved, and taste a range of delights based on gianduja chocolate, of which Turin is the capital.
The cafés are one of the meeting places most loved by Turin’s citizens. In the stuccoed rooms of many of them, since the nineteenth century, politicians and intellectuals have met, discussed and debated, and the Italian Risorgimento perhaps owes more than is realised to heated discussions amid the mirrors and elegant décor of Turin’s cafes.
For more than 200 years Turin has boasted yet another splendid invention: the aperitif.
It was Antonio Benedetto Carpano, back in 1786, who invented Vermouth, in Turin, produced with white wine, together with an infusion of herbs and spices of more than 30 different types. Since then, this special drink has been exported all over the world, with versions subsequently produced by Cinzano and Gancia.
The old “art de vivre” becomes cocktail life. The elements have remain unchanged: a warm and inviting locale, historic or fashionable, a careful and attentive barman, a good cocktail. But today, drinking an aperitif is an inherent part of the atmosphere around us, conveying a sense of relaxation and, above all, a total absence of plans, schedules or appointments: an extended interval, informal, to be enjoyed at your own pace.
Turin has always been known as the “drawing room city” and seems to have been designed for tranquil strolls along its roads, through its piazzas and under its porticoes, which stretch out for more than 16 Km. From the large and beautiful examples in the old centre, paved in grey stone (Via Po), or in marble (via Roma), to the more modest and deliberately functional variants in the suburbs, all of them constitute a unique urban architectonic feature, in their extension and progression along streets, boulevards and piazzas.
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