The arcades of Turin.

getty

Imagine an elegant, magical, and uncrowded Italian city of vast piazzas, arcades, and Art Nouveau-era cafes, with the snow-capped Alps in the background. That’s a pretty good description of the Italian city of Turin in the country’s northwestern corner.

Turin may be the country’s fourth largest metropolis, but it seems oddly forgotten if my recent visit is any indication. For those who love everything Italian, this is good news. It’s not swarming with tourists, like its brethren Venice, Florence, Rome, not to mention Lake Como and the Amalfi Coast. It is stately and handsome, and while it has long had a reputation as Italy’s industrial powerhouse, as the city that gave us Fiat and Lavazza, it is easily as beautiful as some of the places above, if a bit grittier and down to earth. Hugging the curves of the Po River, with the majestic dragon’s teeth of the Alps to the north, it is stately and regal. That’s especially true of Turin in the heart of the off-season.

Rooftop view from NH Collection Torino Piazza Carlina

NH Collection Torino Piazza Carlina
NH Collection Torino Piazza Carlina

Turin immediately became my new favorite Italian city. Not a little of that magic was due to staying at the stately NH Collection Torino Piazza Carlina, a quietly elegant and minimalist hotel in Piazza Carlo Emanuele II in the city’s heart. It opened in 2016 with a friendly staff, a fantastic location, and an excellent restaurant. The property was built in the 17th century as a Regio Albergo di Virtu or Hotel of Virtue, a place to train impoverished young locals for work. In the 20th century, its residents included Antonio Gramsci, the co-founder of the Italian Communist Party.

Guestroom at NH Collection Torino Piazza Carlina.

NH Collection Torino Piazza Carlina

The hotel has a vast inner courtyard, venerable stone floor mosaics in the lobby, large, high-ceilinged guestrooms with natural wood floors, an armchair, bedside tables, and little else. The walls are absent of art, the better to enjoy the room’s spaciousness. There are 160 of these elegant rooms and suites, painted in cool colors, and every room has a Lavazza coffee machine and a glass-fronted shower. There are nice touches, like the “gianduiotti,” the specialty hazelnut chocolate of Turin, adorning your pillow at night. Some rooms have views across the city and even to the Alps.

The hotel also happens to have a terrific restaurant helmed by Chef Daniele Santovito, who prepares classics like Vitello Tionato, veal cheek with Nebbiolo globe artichoke and purple carrot puree, agnolotti in roasted meat sauce, and Gragnano pasta with chickpeas. Since this is Piedmont, the wine list is full of Barolos and Barbarescos. The bar is an especially convivial hangout, with several rooms, usually filled with Torenesi and hotel guests at aperitivo time. There are two rooftop terraces with sublime views as well.

Bicerin, a traditional Turinese hot drink made of layers of espresso, hot chocolate, and frothy milk served in a glass, at the 18th-century Cafe Al Bicerin in Turin.

getty

The hotel is a short walk to the River Po and the city’s beloved Parco del Valentino. But getting pleasantly lost in one of the joys of this city’s narrow streets leading to wide piazzas. With all those arcades and archways, the covered walkways known as “portici” that surround the many piazzas around the city, is it any wonder that Turin was a favorite inspiration for the surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico, who painted infinite archways on some of his most famous canvases? Then there’s the city’s signature drink, bicerin, made with three distinctive layers of espresso, hot chocolate, and whipped cream. It’s best sipped in one of the many art nouveau café adorned with mirrors and chandeliers, places like Il Bicerin.

The hall of armor in Palazzo Reale.

Gayle Conran
Palaces & Museums

On my recent visit, I saw some of the city’s most impressive sites, including the Palazzo Reale, the royal palace. It is enormous and suitably regal, filled with period furniture and artworks – think Rubens and Rembrandt, among others – and the rooms are suitably gilded and mirrored, hung with tapestries, adorned with cherubs. The hall of armor alone is worth the modest admission price. Then there are the Greek and Roman archaeological works in the Museo di Antichità and the gardens designed by André Le Nôtre, the genius behind the gardens at Versailles. From the sublime, I went to the more commonplace, with a Sunday morning romp through the Balon Market, the city’s monthly antiques and flea market, which wraps itself serpent-like through a maze of linked streets, offering up plenty of bric-a-brac and even a few elusive treasures among the hundreds of vendors. The line for the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, situated in the pagoda-like Mole Antonelliana, was long, so it will have to wait for another visit, as will the Museo Egizio, which has one of the largest collections of Egyptian artifacts in the world. Then there’s the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, an art gallery on the top floor of the former Fiat factory. Fiat’s famous test track, Pista 500, is on the roof but now serves as a space for art exhibits.

Gallery San Federico

getty
A City Made for the Passeggiata

Turin, which has a vaguely Parisian air of elegance, is a city made for strolling. That includes perusing the bookshops and galleries under the arcades on Via Po, admiring the endless baroque architecture, and slipping into cafes like Farmacia del Cambio, which began life as a pharmacy and is now one of the city’s finest cafes, made a bit more famous by Stanley Tucci in Searching for Italy. Take a dive into some of the more stately arcades, and you’ll find Galleria Subalpina, probably the most elegant, which has a wine shop, Galleria Gilibert, a rare bookshop with vintage posters, and Caffè Baratti, one of Turin’s most elegant places to sip a bicerin. Architecture devotees must pop into Galleria San Federico, where the Lux Cinema still has its original Art Deco signage, marble floors, and busy shops.

Catfé Torino.

Gayle Conran

If you want the big names in Italian fashion, stroll down Via Roma and into Piazza San Carlo, and pray that you get into the jewel box of Caffé San Carlo or Caffé Torino for a vermouth aperitivo, in the land that gave us both vermouth – Martini and Cinzano are from Turin – and the custom of the aperitivo. I can think of no better place to slow down and take in the passeggiata of evening strollers than under an arcade in elegant Turin.