Things to Do in Turin, Italy

Quick facts: Skyline-piercing spire reaches about 167.5 meters, ranking among the tallest masonry buildings in Europe. Inside a dramatic vertical space, a museum dedicated to cinema stacks exhibits along a spiral ramp, and a glass lift floats visitors up through the central void.

Highlights: Step into the glass panoramic lift and feel the city yawning away beneath you, the view reaching to the snow-capped Alps on clear days from roughly 167.5 meters up. Alessandro Antonelli kept raising the spire far beyond the original plan, sparking local legend that he refused full payment until the tower surpassed expectations, a stubbornness visible in the building’s awkwardly elegant silhouette.

Quick facts: More than 30,000 Egyptian objects fill the collection, with thousands displayed in galleries that guide you from household tools to royal tomb goods. An intact burial of Kha and Merit arrived with clothing, jewelry and wooden boxes, offering an unusually intimate peek into the belongings of skilled artisans.

Highlights: A fragile king-list papyrus lists more than 300 pharaohs in narrow hieratic columns, the faded black ink forming bands that look like a tiny handwritten skyline under magnification. Look closely at the label from the 1906 expedition crediting archaeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli, the tiny notes and pinholes telling a quieter story of how those objects crossed deserts and seas to end up under low, warm gallery lights.

Quick facts: More than 2,000 objects, from vintage cameras to original film posters, are arranged on stacked platforms so exhibits feel like pages in a cinematic scrapbook. Visitors can wander up a spiral ramp and peer across a central atrium where projectors, costumes, and posters frame dramatic sightlines and photo opportunities.

Highlights: Sunlight pours down a towering central shaft at certain times of day, making brass projectors glint and paper posters warm to the eye, while the air carries the faint, dust-sweet smell of old film. A working 35mm projector is sometimes run during weekend screenings, its warm lamp glow and the steady clack of sprockets turning the whole hall into a living movie set.

Quick facts: The Turin Cathedral serves as the seat of the Archbishop and is home to the Shroud of Turin, a linen relic that is displayed only rarely and draws international attention. The interior blends late Gothic bones with Renaissance additions, and an adjacent chapel was specifically created to house the cloth.

Highlights: A tight-knit team of conservators and clergy carefully moves the Shroud during exhibitions, and the last major public display in 2015 drew nearly two million visitors according to official estimates. Dim, filtered light in the dedicated chapel makes the faint, almost photographic image on the fabric appear startlingly detailed to those who stand within a few meters.

Quick facts: Perched on a limestone ridge, the hilltop church rewards a short funicular ride with sweeping views over the Po plain and the snow-capped Alps. Under the nave, a royal crypt holds generations of the House of Savoy, where marble sarcophagi and frescoed chapels create a hushed, cinematic atmosphere.

Highlights: Climb the short funicular and step onto the terrace, where the copper-green dome, cool marble underfoot, and a panorama that frames jagged Alpine peaks feel like walking into a painted stage set. Fans still make a quiet pilgrimage each May to leave scarves and wreaths in memory of the Grande Torino after the 1949 air disaster, a tradition that turns the site into an unexpectedly emotional shrine.

Quick facts: A long riverside green curves along the water, featuring a charming medieval-style village and a small castle that locals use as a backdrop for evening passeggiata. Cyclists, families, and student groups share wide promenades shaded by plane trees, while weekend markets and open-air concerts keep the scene animated.

Highlights: A meticulous medieval village was assembled for the 1884 Italian General Exposition, with craftsmen reproducing stonework, timber frames, and frescoed interiors that reward close-up exploration. Students from the nearby architecture faculty often spread sketchbooks on the castle steps, the scratch of pencils and the scent of old stone giving the place a surprisingly lived-in, creative energy.

Quick facts: Winding cobblestone streets, timber-framed houses and a small fortified courtyard give the feeling of walking through a lived-in medieval neighborhood. A faithful recreation from the 1884 exhibition uses hand-carved stone, leaded glass and visible timber joinery so you can spot techniques that vanished from urban centers centuries ago.

Highlights: Step onto the battlements and you can smell damp moss and hear wind whisper through arrow slits, a sensory snapshot that feels cinematic rather than museumlike. A little-noticed treasure is a tiny painted rooster above the main gate, added during the 1884 project, so if you squint up you get a playful surprise most visitors miss.

Quick facts: More than 1,000 stalls squeeze into a grid of cobbled alleys and open squares, offering everything from trumpet-shaped porcini to secondhand vinyl records. A mash of citrus, earthy mushroom and roasted coffee aromas hangs over the stalls, while vendors call bargains in Italian, Arabic and Romanian.

Highlights: A dedicated cheese row overflows with more than 600 varieties on Saturdays, including alpine Raschera and tiny tomettes, as small producers fly in crates by dawn to keep shelves stacked. Near the fish stalls a vendor nicknamed 'Nonno Marco' shouts orders by name and sells smoked mackerel for 4 euros a kilo, customers praising the briny, smoky bite.

Quick facts: A compact collection assembled by Giovanni and Marella Agnelli brings together around 25 masterpieces, ranging from Venetian vedute to works by Matisse and Picasso. Visitors often praise the airy single-gallery atmosphere, where careful spacing and soft natural light make brushstrokes and frame details feel astonishingly immediate.

Highlights: Renzo Piano's low, glass-sided pavilion perches on a rooftop, so paintings can be enjoyed with a panoramic backdrop that subtly reflects in the gallery glass. A deliberately curated 25-picture hang encourages a slow circuit, many people finishing the full walk-through in under 30 minutes yet lingering long enough to notice varnish texture and small pentimenti up close.

Quick facts: The church was modeled after the Roman Pantheon, with a massive 27-meter-wide dome that perfectly mirrors its ancient predecessor. Steps from the Po River, its neoclassical facade and twin statues of Faith and Religion watch over one of Turin's most photographed piazzas.

Highlights: At the exact center of the church floor, a small brass circle marks the symbolic "heart" of the building, where the dome's oculus casts a perfect ring of light at noon on clear days. During the autumn equinox, the sunlight aligns so precisely through that oculus that it traces a path across the marble floor, drawing visitors who sit in silence to watch the light shift.

Quick facts: A royal family amassed this art over roughly five centuries, leaving around 150 Flemish and Italian works for gallery-goers today. Van Eyck's postcard-sized Saint Francis, one of his few surviving paintings in Italy, hangs a short walk from the royal palace.

Highlights: A palm-sized van Eyck of Saint Francis radiates a gold-leaf glow you can feel from across the room. Lean in to trace the tiny wet-look highlights in the rock face, then step back and watch the halo catch the light from a fresh angle in the pale stone hall.

Quick facts: Roughly 250 vehicles spanning 130 years pack three factory floors, from 19th-century steam carriages to today's electric prototypes. The collection traces back to one obsessive founder who started gathering cars decades before any other European museum did, saving early machines others treated as scrap.

Highlights: A single carpeted ramp spirals up three floors like an unspooling ribbon of road, so the whole visit unfolds as one continuous drive through 130 years of automotive history. Midway up, glass walls open onto a live restoration bay where gloved specialists coax century-old engines back to life, oil and leather scenting the air.