The Royal Palace is the residence the House of Savoy called home for about three centuries, in the heart of Turin, on Piazzetta Reale next to Piazza Castello. Behind the austere facade you will find Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical halls, with...
The Mole Antonelliana is the symbol of Turin: a 167-meter tower in the old town, on Via Montebello, with a square dome and a slender spire you can see from half the city. Inside is the National Museum of Cinema, and up top a panorama over the...
The Turin Cathedral, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, stands on Piazza San Giovanni, next to the ruins of the Roman theater. It houses the Shroud of Turin and has a white marble facade: it is the only Renaissance religious building in the...
The National Museum of Cinema fills the inside of the Mole Antonelliana, in Turin, and tells the story of cinema from its origins to today along a spiral route that climbs toward the dome. This is no museum of display cases: you look, you try...
The National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento occupies the piano nobile of Palazzo Carignano, in Turin, and tells in thirty rooms the road to Italian unity, from the French Revolution to the eve of the First World War. It is the only one...
The Basilica of Superga stands on top of the hill of the same name, at 672 meters, northeast of Turin. Its 75-meter dome can be seen from far away, and from the hill you look out over the whole city, with the Alps behind. It is the great church...
The Parco del Valentino is Turin's best-known public park: 42 hectares along the left bank of the Po, in the San Salvario district, right beside the old town. Among its paths you come across a Savoy castle, a medieval village and monumental...
Palazzo Madama stands on Piazza Castello, in the heart of Turin, and is made of layers: in front a Baroque facade of white stone, behind a medieval castle with towers, underneath a gate of the Roman city. Inside is the Museo Civico d'Arte Antica,...
The Egyptian Museum of Turin is housed in the 17th-century palace of the Academy of Sciences, the work of Guarino Guarini, and holds over 40,000 artifacts from ancient Egypt, from the Paleolithic to the Coptic era. Founded in 1824, it is the...
The Museo Civico d'Arte Antica occupies Palazzo Madama, on Piazza Castello, in Turin. Its more than seventy thousand works range from the Middle Ages to the 1700s: sculptures, paintings, ceramics, ivories, gold, silver, furniture and textiles, in...
The Royal Armory of Turin is a collection of antique weapons and armor housed in the wing linking the Royal Palace to the State Secretariats, inside the complex of the Savoy residences. From the Neolithic to the 1900s, it is one of the richest...
The Museum of the Shroud tells the story of the most debated cloth in Christendom, even though the cloth is not here: it is kept in the Cathedral. It is in Turin, in the crypt of the Church of the Holy Shroud, and gathers artifacts, documents,...
The Automobile Museum, known as MAUTO, stands on the left bank of the Po, in Turin, not far from the Lingotto. It is one of the oldest and most important car museums in the world: about 160 vehicles from 80 makes, from the steam carriage of 1769...
Palazzo Carignano is one of the most important palaces in central Turin, at the corner of Piazza Carignano: a Baroque building whose brick facade ripples like a wave, in a city of straight, military lines. It is part of the Savoy residences...
Piazza San Carlo is the "drawing room" of Turin: a rectangular square, 168 meters long and 76 wide, in the old town, along Via Roma, halfway between Piazza Castello and Piazza Carlo Felice. Elegant arcades, a monument in the middle, two churches...
The Royal Gardens are the great garden behind the Royal Palace, in the old town of Turin, between Piazza Castello and Corso San Maurizio. You enter from Piazza Castello, passing through the palace. They are a green break of avenues, statues and...
The Galleria Sabauda is Turin's great picture gallery: more than 700 paintings, from the 13th to the 20th century, in the Manica Nuova of the Royal Palace, inside the Royal Museums complex next to the Cathedral. It's the right place if you want...
The Lingotto is Turin's former Fiat factory, in the Nizza Millefonti district: a very long reinforced-concrete building with a test track on the roof, now turned into a center for fairs, conferences, hotels, shops and museums. It is the icon of...
The Teatro Regio is Turin's opera house, facing Piazza Castello, next to the Royal Palace: an 18th-century arcaded facade and, behind it, a modern 1970s auditorium, because the old one burned down. This is where you go for opera and ballet in the...
The Gran Madre di Dio is the neoclassical church on the right bank of the Po, in the Borgo Po district, right opposite the Vittorio Emanuele I bridge and Piazza Vittorio Veneto. With the Cappuccini hill behind it, it forms one of the best-known...
San Lorenzo is Turin's royal church: it stands on the northwest side of Piazza Castello, next to Palazzo Chiablese and the Royal Palace. From outside it looks like any other building, with no facade and no bell tower; the masterpiece is all...
Santa Maria al Monte is the Capuchin church on the hill overlooking the Po, in Borgo Po, a few steps from the Vittorio Emanuele I bridge. Together with the convent it makes up one of the best-known views of Turin: from the terrace in front of the...
The Porta Palatina is the ancient north gate of Roman Turin, on the edge of Piazza Cesare Augusto: two sixteen-sided towers and a red-brick facade with four openings. It is the main archaeological evidence of Roman Turin and one of the...
The Borgo Medievale is a 15th-century village built in 1884 in the Valentino park, along the Po, with a main street of houses and workshops, a church, a square with a fountain and, at the top, the Rocca, a castle. It isn't old: it's a...
The Palazzo dell'Accademia delle Scienze is the large 17th-century building on Via Accademia delle Scienze, in the center of Turin, which houses the Museo Egizio and the seat of the Academy of Sciences. The facade looks onto the street of the...
The Museo di Antichità is Turin's archaeological museum, heir to the Regio Museo di Antichità founded in 1724 and therefore one of the oldest archaeological museums in Europe. Its collections are in the Archaeological Gallery of the Manica Nuova...
Piazza Castello is Turin's main square, the heart of the historic center: a large square space of about 40,000 square meters surrounded by arcades, with Palazzo Madama rising at its center, which gave it its name. Via Roma, Via Po, Via Garibaldi...
The Orto Botanico di Torino is the University's botanical garden, on the left bank of the Po, near the Valentino park. It is a place of study for the University, open to visitors too, with greenhouses, a miniature woodland, a corner of plants...
The GAM, the Galleria civica d'arte moderna e contemporanea, is Turin's museum of 19th- and 20th-century art, on Via Magenta, in the Crocetta district. It holds over 47,000 works including paintings, sculptures, installations and videos, and can...
The Consolata is Turin's best-loved sanctuary, on Via della Consolata, in the historic center. Its official name is the Basilica of Santa Maria della Consolazione, but everyone calls it "la Consolà": a masterpiece of Piedmontese Baroque built by...
The Villa della Regina is a 17th-century villa on the hill of Turin, in the Borgo Po district, with an Italian garden carved into the slope. It was the summer residence of the Savoy queens, and since 1997 it has been part of the Residences of the...
The Pinacoteca dell'Accademia Albertina is the gallery of Turin's historic art school, on Via Accademia Albertina in the city center: paintings from the 15th to the 20th century, Piedmontese, Italian and Flemish, gathered so that students could...
The Church of Santa Cristina closes the south side of Piazza San Carlo in Turin, toward Porta Nuova: it is the twin of the Church of San Carlo, and together they frame the entrance of Via Roma into the city's Baroque "drawing room."
The...
The Castello del Valentino is a Savoy residence on the banks of the Po, in the Valentino park, in the French style: steep pitched roofs, a cobbled court of honor and frescoed interiors. Since 1997 it has been part of the Residences of the Royal...
The Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria of Turin is one of Italy's great libraries, on Piazza Carlo Alberto opposite Palazzo Carignano: a modern building hidden behind the 19th-century façade of the palace's old stables.
It holds rare...
Piazza Carlo Felice is the large garden square in front of Porta Nuova station in Turin, where Via Roma meets Corso Vittorio Emanuele II: for anyone arriving by train it is the first glimpse of the city, framed by 19th-century arcades and...
Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, simply "Corso Vittorio" to the people of Turin, is the long avenue that crosses Turin from east to west for 4.2 kilometers, from the Ponte Umberto I over the Po to Piazza Rivoli, passing in front of Porta Nuova...
The Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali in Turin holds the University's natural history collections, assembled in the 18th and 19th centuries, in the monumental former Ospedale San Giovanni Battista on Via Giolitti, in the historic...
The Church of San Filippo Neri is the largest church in Turin, 69 meters long and 37 wide, on Via Maria Vittoria a short walk from the Egyptian Museum: behind the neoclassical portico opens a single, immense nave designed by Filippo...
The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is one of Turin's best-known contemporary art centers, on Via Modane in the Borgo San Paolo neighborhood: exhibitions of artists, mostly young ones, in a former factory turned into an exhibition...