The mountain setting of Turin alone is worth the journey. Turin is a real city in all senses of the word, a great city ringed by a continuous backdrop of mountains and hills. It is a city of the plains, reflecting the centuries-old plans of the dynasty of the House of Savoy, from the mountains to the plains. However, it is still a city whose alpine calling remains intact: a tangible and striking reference point which sets it apart from any other European city.

In this perfectly flat corridor, crossed by the tributary streams and rivers of the great river, the Po, which precisely at Turin assumes the dimensions fitting to a great river, the genius of Caesar Augustus had placed the logical foundations of the castrum (fort) dedicated to his name. This was the Augusta Taurinorum - a decisive imprint which has been respected and expanded by the engineers and architects of the Dukes and Kings of Savoy of the 19th and 20th centuries.

This city, built on a regular grid plan, is both pragmatic and cultured. After the transferral of the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy from Turin to Florence and then to Rome, it seemed to be ready-made to reconvert its physical and intellectual energy to the greatest industrial adventure of the 20th century, that of the automobile industry.

Having been the capital of Italy, and before that, of Sicily and Sardinia, Turin has experienced - like a real laboratory city - the birth of a great industrial trust and the identification of the city with this trust, with the acquisition of a new sovereignty, no longer a political and territorial one, but an industrial and financial one.

However, Turin is getting ready to change even this latest phase of its history. The conversion of the Lingotto premises from military-style factory to a temple dedicated to the advanced services sector is the most obvious evidence of this, together with a new focus on culture and its institutions, especially those - like the Museo dell’Automobile (Car Museum) - which best illustrate the history of the city. From being the capital of a bureaucratic military state, Turin has become the reference point of contemporary industrial and technological development, and perhaps in the future, will be the model for the management of that inexhaustible resource, the cultural heritage of Italy.

A few days are not sufficient to discover Turin (Torino), a city with more than two thousand years’ history and increasingly forward-looking. First the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, it was then considered one of the European capitals of baroque and today of contemporary art. Major Italian industry was born in Turin (Torino), where development and design have played a fundamental role, with great professionals and companies involved in wide-ranging projects: in 2008 Turin (Torino) will celebrate this history becoming World Design Capital. The city is also World Book Capital until 2007 with Rome, celebrating its literary traditions, its present and the future that is still to be written… Cinema was another important aspect of the city, before it moved to Rome: today the seventh art is returning, thanks to a reborn film industry and cultural initiatives such as the Torino Film Festival and the Museo Nazionale del Cinema. And finally, Torino capital of the spirit, with its dense mystical history, its social saints and the continuing interreligious and intercultural dialogue, that finds its place in events such as Torino Spiritualità.

The city has a rigorous simplicity that is reminiscent of cities such as St. Petersburg. The consistent use of perspective creates a dreamlike quality favoured by the Metaphysical painter De Chirico. It is also a rich and complex city whit its amazing gardens.

The characteristic Savoy buildings mix with the highly decorative style and middle-class city parks of the 19th-century.

Many historic and artistic masterpieces, typical of Turin's subtle sobriety, can be found within the perfect city grid plan. Churches, buildings, cafe, theatres and performance locations and royal palaces spread from the centre of Turin to the surrounding areas of Venaria, Rivoli, Stupinigi, Racconigi and Aglié. The many impressive churches which came under Savoy patronage, such as the Cathedral and Palatine Chapel, San Lorenzo and Superga are well worth visiting.

Turin also boasts museums and collections that cannot be found anywhere else in the world such as the Museo Egizio, the Galleria Sabauda, the Armeria and Biblioteca Reale, the Museo di Antichità and the Museo del Risorgimento. Many of these sights are locasted in the "Zona di Comando" (seat of power), an area little more than 500 square metres made up of an impressive series of buildings that contained all the Savoy seats of government and from where they maintained their absolute power.
During the XX Winter Olympic Games Turin will host ice hockey, speed skating, short track e figure skating competitions.


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