Torino Torino
Why visit Turin? Because it is a city that is undergoing profound urban transformation. The city has taken on a new guise, thanks to the creation of ultramodern Olympic facilities and state of the art infrastructure. Turin with its new subway system has entered in the company of modern European cities. Turin’s has an innate industrial vocation that has enabled it to adapt to new technological needs, to the extent that today it has become one of the main centres of the ICT sector.
Turin has known how to speak of its own history through the testimony of its many artistic and architectural sights. We can learn of the Ancient Roman times through the Palatine Gates, the Savoy era through its Baroque palaces and churches, the nineteenth century that saw Turin as capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and the 1950s through its factories. Turin has been able to transform itself recently into an important international capital of taste. It is the “homeland” of vermouth, of grissini bread sticks, and of chocolate that is craved by refined palates the world over. Turin is a great commercial centre. Besides the stores in its city centre, there are about 50 open-air markets and 18 kilometres of arcades that frame the main squares and city streets. Turin, where Italian cinema was born, has dedicated one of its most interesting museums to this “seventh art” located right inside the Mole Antonelliana, the symbol of the city. Turin is tied in with cinema as a privileged set for important film and television productions.
As Le Corbusier said, “Turin is the city with the most beautiful natural location.” In fact, one of its assets is its extraordinary environmental heritage. It has 16,000,000 square metres of parks and gardens, 400 kilometres of tree-lined streets, more than 60,000 plants, 17 parks, and 70 kilometres of green areas along the four rivers in the city - the Po, Dora Riparia, Stura and Sangone. Turin is a city that is fascinating, aristocratic, literary, magic and very beautiful. As a young Sicilian writer wrote, we should visit Turin because “Turin is Turin and it is not a city like any other.”
Info
Piazza Palazzo di Città, 1 - 10122 Torino
Tel. +39.011.442.1111 (Centralino); +39.011.442.3014 (Urp)
Fax: +39.011.4422723
www.comune.torino.it
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Places
Villa Taranto Botanical Gardens
Villa Taranto and its gardens, which look out over Lago Maggiore, have a vast botanical trove that includes about 1,000 plants, which until today had never been cultivated in Italy, and about 20,000 varieties and species of particular botanical importance.
Filatoio Rosso di Caraglio
The Filatoio (Spinning Mill), built between 1676 and 1678, is an extraordinary example of 17th century Piemonte “industrial architecture”. Today, completely restored, it houses the Museo Regionale della Seta (Regional Silk Museum), as well as contemporary art shows.
Castello di Aglič
This sumptuous home was built, beginning in 1646 following a design by Amedeo di Castellamonte, by Filippo d’Aglie, statesman, literary man, choreographer, and adviser to Madama Reale, on the ruins of an ancient fortress.
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People
Riccardo Scamarcio
"I confess. I have committed the sin of gluttony in Piemonte. Dishes made with Alba truffles are irresistible and are a “must” during my stays in Piemonte."
Carlo Mazzacurati
“Torino is a special place for me, I must say it’s almost exotic. I always enjoy coming to town. I worked in Torino in 2001 while filming A cavallo della tigre. We would shoot at the le Nuove prison and while we were on the set we heard about 9-11 Attack on the Twin Towers”.
Gerard Roero Di Cortanze
“There must be a psychoanalytic bond between Torino, Piemonte and myself. Every time I come to town, I feel at home, as if the doors to my own house were being re-opened. I have never lived in this city. Every time I’m here it is as if I put my foot on the fog of a ghost, face to face with my past. Torino is my imaginary life, a double retrospect, a flashback…”
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