Italy's first capital is arcaded, elegant, and criminally overlooked by travellers who fly straight past it to Milan or the Dolomites.
Piazza Castello and Piazza San Carlo are Turin's set pieces, all symmetrical façades, equestrian statues, and covered arcades built so the Savoy nobility could walk between palaces without getting rained on. Sit at one of the historic cafés on San Carlo — Caffè Torino or the older Caffè San Carlo — and order a bicerin, the city's own drink of espresso, chocolate, and cream layered in a small glass, invented here two centuries before anyone had heard of a mocha.
Turin invented industrial chocolate in Italy, and it shows: Guido Gobino and Peyrano still make gianduiotti, the ingot-shaped hazelnut chocolates wrapped in gold foil, by methods barely changed since the 1800s. Pair a chocolate crawl with the Egyptian Museum, which holds the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities outside Cairo — a strange and wonderful mismatch for a city better known for cars and coffee.
Climb or take the panoramic lift up the Mole Antonelliana, the spired tower that appears on Italy's two-cent coin, for a view that on a clear day stretches to the snow-capped Alps ringing the city. That alpine backdrop is Turin's trump card over its Italian rivals — few other cities let you finish an espresso in a Baroque piazza and see real mountains rising behind the rooftops.
