Turin, Italy

Evergreen city guide with quick facts, travel, business, and culture.

ItalyPiedmont

Overview

Turin holds the most important collection of Egyptian antiquities outside Cairo, eighteen kilometres of covered arcades, and the café tradition that invented the aperitivo — and is routinely skipped for Milan.

Egyptian Museum

The most important collection of Egyptian antiquities outside Cairo, with an intact tomb group and monumental statuary.

Arcades & Baroque Centre

Eighteen kilometres of covered portico, grand squares and the UNESCO-listed former royal buildings.

The Mole & Cinema Museum

The city's emblem, a spiralling museum inside its great hall, and a glass lift to an Alpine panorama.

Aperitivo & Chocolate

The birthplace of vermouth and the aperitivo ritual, historic mirrored cafés, bicerin and gianduja.

Culture

Piedmont is one of Italy's great eating regions and Turin is the way in. Vitello tonnato, agnolotti del plin, bagna cauda in the cold months, and tajarin under white truffle in autumn are the dishes to look for. Gianduja — the hazelnut-chocolate paste invented here after cocoa became scarce — is sold as gianduiotti everywhere, and bicerin, the layered coffee-chocolate-cream drink, belongs to the historic cafés. The aperitivo spread in this city is famously generous and frequently replaces dinner rather than preceding it. Festivals: Salone del Libro, the book fair, in spring, Torino Film Festival, in late autumn, White truffle season in the Langhe, autumn, Luci d'Artista, winter light installations across the city. Museums: Museo Egizio, National Cinema Museum, in the Mole Antonelliana, Palazzo Reale and the Royal Armoury, National Automobile Museum, Pinacoteca Agnelli, at Lingotto.

Practical Info

Safety: Turin is a comfortable city with the ordinary precautions of any large one — attention to bags around Porta Nuova station and on crowded trams, and normal awareness in the quieter streets late at night. The practical points that catch visitors are duller: the historic centre is covered by camera-enforced restricted traffic zones, so do not drive in, and winter fog and cold are genuinely persistent, which is worth packing for rather than being surprised by. Language: Italian; English is reasonably common in the museums and central hotels and thinner in neighbourhood bars, where Piedmontese-accented Italian and a certain formality are the norm. Currency: The euro. Cards are accepted almost everywhere, though older cafés and market stalls still prefer cash for small rounds.
Travel Overview

Turin is the major Italian city visitors most often leave out, and the omission is hard to justify once you know what is here. Its Egyptian Museum holds the most significant collection of Egyptian antiquities anywhere outside Cairo — not a few cases but whole rooms of statuary, papyri and an intact tomb assemblage — and it alone would carry a weekend. The city around it is unlike the rest of Italy: laid out on the Roman grid but rebuilt in baroque and neoclassical order, with roughly eighteen kilometres of covered arcades along its main streets, which means Turin is the one Italian city genuinely pleasant to walk in rain. At the centre of the skyline is the Mole Antonelliana, a tall and improbable brick dome that now contains the national cinema museum, arranged up through the interior with a glass lift running to a viewing platform where, on clear days, the Alps close the view at the end of the streets. Turin is also where aperitivo was invented: vermouth was created here, the historic cafés along Via Po and Piazza San Carlo still serve it under mirrored ceilings, and the early-evening ritual of a drink with a generous spread is a local institution rather than a marketing exercise. Add gianduja chocolate, a serious Piedmontese kitchen with the Langhe wine hills an hour south, and the former Fiat factory whose rooftop test track is now a public garden. Autumn and spring are the best seasons; winter is cold and foggy but suits the museums and cafés.

Discover Turin

The single strongest reason to come. The Museo Egizio holds the most important collection of Egyptian material outside Cairo, built over two centuries and displayed in a building given over entirely to it. The scale is what surprises: a gallery of monumental statuary, an intact tomb group with its contents assembled as found, papyri including a famous map, and rooms of everyday objects that do more to explain the civilisation than the monuments do. Allow three hours minimum and book a timed slot in advance, particularly at weekends. The labelling is bilingual and the audio guide is worth taking.

Frequently asked questions

Different cities entirely, and Turin is the calmer and — for museums — the richer of the two. It holds the most important Egyptian collection outside Cairo, the national cinema museum inside a landmark you can ride a lift through, and a baroque centre with roughly eighteen kilometres of covered arcades. It is also markedly cheaper to eat and sleep in, less crowded, and under an hour from Milan by fast train, which makes combining them straightforward. If your interest is fashion and shopping, Milan wins; for museums, food, cafés and walking, Turin does.

Three hours as a realistic minimum, and half a day if you engage with it properly — the collection runs to whole rooms of statuary, an intact tomb assemblage displayed as found, and extensive papyri, so it is not a one-hour stop between other things. Book a timed entry in advance, especially at weekends and in holiday periods, when queues are long. Labelling is bilingual and the audio guide adds a great deal. Going first thing in the morning is noticeably quieter than the afternoon.

Almost certainly not, and it is better to know that before you plan around it. The linen is kept at the cathedral but is not on permanent public display; public exhibitions are rare and separated by many years, and they are announced well in advance. What you can see day to day is the cathedral itself, the chapel that houses the reliquary, and a nearby museum devoted to the object's history and to the scientific examinations of it. Anyone travelling specifically for a viewing should confirm an exhibition is scheduled before booking.

Diplomatic missions in Turin

1 embassy based in this city, grouped by region.