Turin has the same relationship with a motorhome that Rome has, and for quite different reasons: you do not drive into it, but here it is not because the streets are narrow. Turin's streets are the opposite, wide and straight as the people in charge drew them, and the problem is another one: a limited traffic zone in the Quadrilatero, fast through roads where you cannot leave anything, and the plain fact that a seven metre vehicle in a city is a vehicle to be put away. The good news is that putting it away in Turin is cheap and works well, because the city is flat and has a tram network that goes where you need it: from one of the stopping areas the tram leaves from the gate. The rest is done by eighteen kilometres of arcades, which are this city's real piece of town planning and which change the way you walk it, in summer and in winter alike. Turin is done on foot and with a day ticket, and the motorhome does not move for two days.
Sleeping
Stops and overnight stays
Three candidates, and none of them seen by us. The measure by which you choose is not comfort: it is the line that passes the gate and how long it takes in the morning. In Turin this counts more than elsewhere, because the network is good and the difference between one stop and another is measured in changes, not in kilometres.
Area camper Caio Mario
Corso Giovanni Agnelli 190, 10135 Torino
it is the first choice for one reason only, and the reason is not the equipment but tram 4, which stops at the entrance and reaches piazza Castello in a little over twenty minutes, with no changes. Run by GTT, fenced and under video surveillance, staffed during the day; services on a rechargeable card, electricity and hot showers metered. The ground is a mix of grass and asphalt and there is little shade, which tells in July. The stated maximum stay has been raised to seven days. We did not sleep here: rate, staffing and rules are to be confirmed when booking.
57 bays of about 8 by 4.5 metres, three of them for people with disabilities
WaterGrey waterElectricityToiletsShowerWi-Fi
18 euros per 24 hours according to the operator, to be confirmed · gtt.to.it
Corso Trattati di Roma angolo Corso Carlo Piaggia, 10141 Torino
it is the closest to the centre of the three, but it is the least defined: it began as a filling and emptying point beside Parco Ruffini, it is free, shaded by trees and lit at night, and motorhome travellers do sleep there, but overnight stays are not declared anywhere and this page does not declare them in their place. There is no video surveillance. Buses 56 and 66 are a few steps away, and there is a cycle path along via Tirreno. Watch out for events at the PalaRuffini, which is right there: on match days parking may be restricted.
free, level, asphalted, fenced and under video surveillance but not staffed, with a maximum stay of 72 hours. It has two rules you will not find elsewhere and which are worth reading before driving eighty kilometres: it is reserved for visitors not resident in the Metropolitan City of Turin, and it takes neither trailers nor tents. Tokens for the services are bought at the Il Draghetto car wash, which stands beside the area and is the practical reference for everything: open Monday to Saturday in the morning, closed on Wednesdays. For the centre: Collegno railway station is 400 metres away, the Fermi metro station is 1.2 kilometres, five minutes on buses 33 and 33 barred or a quarter of an hour on foot.
WaterGrey waterElectricity
Free, you pay only for the services · 347 174 1435
A day ticket and your legs. Turin is one of the Italian cities where public transport really is worth it, and the only one where the walk is done almost entirely under an arcade.
Metro line 1, driverless, from Fermi (Collegno) to Bengasi by way of Porta Susa and Porta Nuova: it is the spine everything else leans on
Tram 4, which is the motorhome traveller's line: from the Caio Mario area it reaches the centre with no changes
GTT tickets: go for the day ticket or a carnet, not the single. Anyone visiting several museums should look at the Torino+Piemonte Card, which covers entries and transport, and the Abbonamento Musei for those who come back
Eighteen kilometres of arcades, largely unbroken: from piazza Castello you reach the Valentino and Porta Nuova without getting wet
By bicycle the city is flat and has a growing network; along the Po the cycle path is almost unbroken
The city centre limited traffic zone operates on weekday mornings: it does not concern anyone who leaves the vehicle in a stopping area, but it concerns anyone thinking of approaching the centre in any vehicle at all
Seeing
Sights
Ten places, and they are of two different kinds: six sit inside a square you can walk in a day, the other four want transport and half a day each. Tap a marker on the map to open its entry below.
1
Piazza Castello
Square · free entry · 45.07111, 7.68737
the geometric and political centre of the city, from which the four main streets run out. At the middle stands Palazzo Madama, which has two opposite faces and not by accident: on one side the baroque front by Filippo Juvarra, on the other the medieval castle with the Roman towers built into it. It is the place to begin, because from here you understand how Turin is made
it is not one museum but six in a row, on a single ticket: the Princes' Apartment in the Royal Palace, the Royal Armoury, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, the Galleria Sabauda, the Museum of Antiquities and the Roman Theatre. Guarini's Chapel of the Holy Shroud is the one reopened in 2018 after twenty eight years: closed in May 1990 when a fragment of marble fell from a cornice, and then gutted by the fire of April 1997. The cloth is not on show, the dome is. The closing day is Wednesday and not Monday, which is the commonest mistake
Opening hours Thursday to Tuesday 9:00-19:00, closed on Wednesday, ticket office until 18:00 · 15 euros, reduced 2 euros from 18 to 25 years, free under 18 · museireali.beniculturali.it
the oldest Egyptian museum in the world and the second in importance after Cairo, born in 1824 out of the collection Bernardino Drovetti put together while serving as consul. The ticket is sold online only, choosing the day and the time slot, and anyone arriving without one stays outside: that is the thing to know beforehand, not at the door. It wants a real half day
Opening hours Monday 9:00-14:00, Tuesday to Sunday 9:00-18:30 · 18 euros, reduced 15, 3 euros from 15 to 18 years and for university students, 1 euro from 6 to 14, free under 6, family 36 · museoegizio.it
built as a synagogue and become the symbol of the city, 167 metres tall. Inside is the National Cinema Museum, which is not visited horizontally but vertically, with the temple hall crossed by ramps and loungers from which you watch the screens. The panoramic lift rises to the little temple in 59 seconds and is paid separately: the last descent is ten minutes before closing. There is also the climb up the dome on foot, with guided visits on Saturdays and Sundays and accompanied ones on other days, not suitable for everyone and not allowed under 6
Opening hours every day 9:00-19:00, closed on Tuesday, last entry one hour before · museum 18 euros and reduced 16, lift only 9 and 7, museum and lift combined 23 and 20 · museocinema.it
Turin's drawing room, closed at one end by the twin churches of San Carlo and Santa Cristina and watched over at its centre by the Caval 'd Brons, the equestrian monument to Emanuele Filiberto. It is the square of the historic cafés under the arcades, the ones where bicerin has been drunk for two centuries: coffee, chocolate and cream in layers that are not stirred together
the Roman core of the city, where the grid of streets is still that of Augusta Taurinorum. The Porta Palatina is one of the best preserved Roman gates anywhere, with its two many sided towers and two tiers of windows. Around it, the Quadrilatero is the quarter of the taverns and the bars, quiet by day and full at night
the largest open air market in Europe, in piazza della Repubblica, and the place where Turin stops resembling a Savoy capital. Saturday is the big day, and next door is the Balon, the second hand market. You go early in the morning: after one o'clock it comes down
the park on the Po, where the people of Turin run and row. Inside are two things that have nothing to do with one another: the Castello del Valentino, a Savoy residence in the French manner and today a faculty of architecture, and the Borgo Medievale, which is not medieval at all: it is a reconstruction built for the Italian General Exhibition of 1884, copying real castles of Piedmont and the Aosta Valley. The village is free to walk, the keep is paid
Juvarra's basilica on top of the hill, willed by Vittorio Amedeo II for the vow he made before the siege of 1706, and beneath it the tombs of the House of Savoy. Behind the apse is the memorial to the Grande Torino, which crashed into the embankment on 4 May 1949, and that is not a tourist stop. You go up by the Sassi-Superga rack tramway, three kilometres with gradients up to 21 per cent: in summer there is a service every hour, it does not run on Wednesdays, and it costs 4 euros one way and 6 return on weekdays, 6 and 9 on Saturdays and holidays. Times and fares change with the season and are to be checked on gtt.to.it
two hundred cars over three thousand square metres, told as a history of manners rather than as a display of number plates. It stands on the Po to the south, and it is the museum that suits anyone sleeping at Caio Mario, because it is on the same side of the city: you can do it on the afternoon you arrive without going into the centre
Opening hours Monday 10:00-14:00, Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-19:00 · 18 euros, reduced 15 for over 65s and from 18 to 25 years, 8 euros from 6 to 17, free under 6 · museoauto.com
Four occasions that move the city, and which are worth catching or avoiding depending on how you travel.
Next: Luci d'Artista · 22 Oct - 10 Jan
22 Oct › 10Jan
Luci d'Artista
November to January
light installations by contemporary artists along the streets and squares, outdoors and free
24 Nov › 2Dec
Torino Film Festival
November
in the cinemas of the centre, in a city that holds on tightly to film
13-17May
Turin International Book Fair
May
at the Lingotto, five days: the city fills up and finding somewhere to sleep becomes a problem, to be reckoned with in advance
This year's dates are not out yet
Terra Madre Salone del Gusto
September, in even years
the Slow Food gathering, which brings producers from all over the world to Turin
Remember
Useful tips
Two full days are enough for the centre, three if you want to do the Egyptian Museum and the Musei Reali properly, which are half a day each
The vehicle stops once. Choose the stopping area by the line that passes its gate and not by the services it has: twenty minutes more each morning, for two days, is an hour and a half of visiting you do not do
Book the Egyptian Museum before you leave home, because the ticket is online only and the time slots run out
Wednesday and Tuesday are the awkward days: the Musei Reali close on Wednesday, the Mole on Tuesday, and the Superga tramway on Wednesday. An itinerary that ignores this loses two things out of three
In July and August Turin is hot and empty, and many of the taverns in the Quadrilatero close for the holidays. The good months are April, May, September and October
With children, the ZOOM biopark at Cumiana is the day that saves the trip, and it has a camper area of its own: twenty five kilometres, and you sleep there instead of in the city
Turin · part two
and then?
What to do, what to taste, and where to go tomorrow.
Experiences from here
What we did starting from here, ordered by driving time.
The dish of the Piedmontese summer is a cold dish made the day before, and its name is a small deception: on a widely held reading tonnato does not come from tuna but from the French «tanné», meaning tanned, and the tuna would have arrived later, dragged in by the likeness of sound.
tie the joint with kitchen string, so that it stays compact while cooking and slices better
put it in a narrow pan with the carrot, the onion, the celery, the bay leaf and the cloves, cover it with the white wine and let it rest for a few hours, better a whole night
bring it gently to the boil and cook covered for about an hour
turn off the heat and let the meat cool inside its own liquid without draining it: this is the step that decides whether it stays tender or turns to string
blend the tuna with the anchovies, the capers keeping a tablespoon back, and the hard boiled yolks, pouring in the oil in a thin stream
loosen the sauce with a few spoonfuls of the strained cooking liquid, until it is smooth and thick, then adjust with the lemon juice and salt
slice the cold meat as thin as you can, better on a slicer, and lay it on the plate with the slices barely overlapping
cover with the sauce, keep it in the fridge for at least two hours and finish with the capers you kept back
Palazzo Madama on the side of the medieval castle, with its brick towers on Piazza CastelloPalazzo Madama again, behind one of the cast iron lamp posts of the squarethe Royal Palace at the end of Piazzetta Reale, with the fountains in front of the railingsthe Porta Palatina with its two Roman towers, at the end of the paving between the bare treesthe Mole Antonelliana seen from below, its spire against the skyPiazza Vittorio Veneto and its arcades, with the Mole rising above the roofsPiazza San Carlo at night, with the twin churches at the end and the Caval 'd Brons in the middlethe Caval 'd Brons between the lit façades of San Carlo and Santa Cristina, at the hour when the square fills upPiazza Carlo Alberto framed by an arch of the arcade, with the equestrian monument and the National Library behindlooking up from under an arcade, between the hanging lamp and the façadesVia Pietro Micca, the eclectic late nineteenth century buildings above the arcades and the tram rails, with Palazzo Bellia on the corner and the Intesa Sanpaolo tower at the endPalazzo Bellia, with its round loggias above the arcades on the corner of Via Pietro Miccathe Galleria Subalpina, under the iron and glass vaultthe Galleria Subalpina, with the plants in the middle and the balustrades of the upper floorthe frescoed and gilded vault of the church of the Santi Martirithe Basilica of Superga on top of the hill, with the plain and the Alps behind, at sunset
