Tours in Torino

Turin was a Roman legion camp before it was anything else. The city grid still runs on that plan. Via Garibaldi even follows the old decumanus in a straight line.

The Porta Palatina still stands, all brick. Two round towers flank the passage, and it once marked where the Roman wall closed the city. The Savoy dukes moved their capital here in 1563, then built on that same grid for three centuries.

What the grid holds

Piazza Castello is the hinge of the old centre. The Royal Palace sits on one side, Savoy for three centuries and now a UNESCO site. The medieval Palazzo Madama faces it from the other.

The Duomo next door keeps the Shroud of Turin sealed in a case. It goes on public display only once every decade or two. Most visits show only the case, not the cloth.

The Mole Antonelliana began life as a planned synagogue. It grew to 167 metres before anyone agreed what to do with it. It now holds the National Cinema Museum.

Egypt, cars and the hills

• Museo Egizio. Founded in 1824 on a royal purchase of antiquities gathered by a French consul in Egypt — the same collection Champollion used to test his decoding of hieroglyphs. Second in size only to Cairo's.
• Reggia di Venaria. The Savoy hunting palace outside town, restored after decades of neglect and now one of the largest royal complexes open in Europe.
• Sacra di San Michele and Castello di Rivoli. A cliffside abbey west of the city and a Savoy castle turned contemporary art museum, both day trips rather than city stops.
• Cars. Fiat was built here, and MAUTO, the car museum, tells that story in about two hours.

Practical

• Weather. Winters run cold and damp, with real winter fog off the plain; summers turn hot and close, past 30C in July.
• Chocolate. Bicerin — coffee, chocolate and cream layered in a small glass — was invented here; the original café on Piazza della Consolata has served it since 1763.
• Closing days vary. Each museum keeps its own weekly closure, so check before building a day. The Egyptian Museum stays open daily, on a short 9-to-2 stretch on Monday.
• Driving. The centre is a restricted traffic zone with camera fines, same as most Italian old towns; park outside and walk in.
• Getting around. One metro line covers the centre well; trams and buses fill the rest.