How to Get Off the Beaten Path in Turin

The city of Turin in northwestern Italy is often overlooked by tourists, despite plenty of good reasons to visit. Those who do venture to Turin are treated to a city with a beautiful historic center, a singular obsession with combining chocolate with hazelnuts, and a few unusual attractions thrown in for good measure.

If you’ve heard of Turin, it’s likely because you’re familiar with the city’s most famous attractions - the Shroud of Turin, said by believers to have been laid over the dead body Jesus after he was crucified. Whatever you believe, a trip to the Shroud Museum is a must when in Turin. The actual Shroud itself is kept elsewhere - it’s in the city’s San Giovanni Battista Cathedral inside a vault that’s very rarely opened - but a replica is on display in the Shroud Museum, along with historic information and artifacts related to the story of the Shroud.

Turin’s main symbol is the distinctive Mole Antonelliana spire, which - if you’ve only seen photos of - you might expect to tower over the city. Despite the building’s relatively low stature, it was once the tallest brick building in the world and today houses the tallest museum in the world (Italy’s National Museum of Cinema). Interestingly, the Mole Antonelliana was originally designed to be a synagogue.

Italy may not be the first place you’d look for the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities outside Cairo, but Turin’s Egyptian Museum contains just that. The museum’s collection includes mummies, an ancient tomb found intact and transferred in its entirety to the museum, and a room dedicated to papyrus artifacts. The Museo Egizio gets more than 500,000 visitors each year.

Children of all ages may appreciate the Marionette Museum in Turin, with more than 5,000 items of historic puppetry on display. Car enthusiasts may want to take an elevator to the top floor of the Lingotto building, a former Fiat factory - although today Lingotto is a multi-use building (housing a mall, hotel, and concert halls), the rooftop remains as it was when Fiat used to bring its finished cars up for a test drive on the rooftop track.

Turin is said by some to be a kind of “vortex” between good and evil - there are supposedly elements of both black magic and white magic found throughout the city itself and its history. You can let your mind wander as you follow an expert local guide on a tour of the city’s magical highlights, and you can also explore Turin’s underground passages - both of these experiences are sure to leave you with unique memories of a city well worth the visit.