Turin was Rome's Alpine gate, the Savoy dynasty's baroque capital and Italy's first capital in 1861 — all inside one grid of arcaded streets. Three days trace the Porta Palatina, the ducal palaces and the parliament that made a country.
The best-preserved Roman city gate in the world outside Rome: two 30m polygonal towers and a red-brick façade from the 1st century BC, marking the northern entrance of Julia Augusta Taurinorum. The surrounding archaeological park is open-air and free.
Turin's Roman and pre-Roman collection sits in the Palazzo Reale's former orangery, largely underground. Highlights: the Marengo silver treasure with its bust of Lucius Verus, and the reconstructed Roman theatre remains visible outside.
Turin's only Renaissance building (1491–98), raised over three earlier basilicas. Guarini's black marble Cappella della Sindone, restored after the 1997 fire and reopened in 2018, holds the Shroud in a sealed case behind the high altar.
The city's oldest continuous place of worship, with a 10th-century Romanesque bell tower still standing over Guarini and Juvarra's later oval sanctuary. Turin's plague survivors filled it with ex-voto paintings that cover entire walls.
The only museum with 'national' status for the Risorgimento, in the Guarini palace where Victor Emmanuel II was born and where the first Italian parliament sat in 1861. Thirty rooms cover 1706 to the Republic; the original chamber is the centrepiece.
Opened 1822 and the first café in Italy lit by gas. Cavour and the Risorgimento conspirators met under its mirrored Murano chandelier when political gatherings were banned; the square outside was the Savoy parade ground laid out in 1642.
The surviving keep of Turin's 1564 star fortress, which held out through the 1706 French siege — the tunnel where Pietro Micca blew himself up to save the city runs beneath. Artillery pieces span the 15th century to WWII.
Guided descent into 14 km of counter-mine galleries dug beneath the Cittadella. The 1706 siege ended when Micca detonated a charge in a stairwell; the actual staircase and blast site are on the tour route, 15 metres down.
One building holding 2,000 years: Roman gate towers, a medieval Acaja castle, and Juvarra's 1721 baroque façade added for Madama Reale Maria Giovanna Battista. The Senate of the Kingdom of Italy met here from 1848.
The Roman street grid survives as a dense quarter of workshops and osterie between Porta Palatina and Via Garibaldi. Via Bonelli and Via delle Orfane keep 17th-century courtyards; the district was Turin's working-class heart into the 1980s.
Turin was Italy's most bombed industrial city and a Resistance stronghold; the museum sits above a genuine wartime air-raid shelter beneath Palazzo San Celso. Displays cover 1938–1948, deportations and the April 1945 general strike.
A full-scale medieval village built for the 1884 Italian General Exhibition, copying real Piedmontese and Aosta Valley castles house by house. The riverside village and its rocca fortress became permanent when the fair closed.