A Weekend in Turin

As a Christmas present for our son, we bought tickets for a Juventus match (what we do for our kids... we're Bologna supporters!!!) on the condition, though, that if we went to Turin for the match, we would also visit the city. So we decided to book train and hotel for the weekend right before Christmas, and we enjoyed a festive Turin lit up by the "luci d'autore" (designer lights), and we took the chance to buy the last gifts, stocking up on local specialities including chocolate and assorted chocolates, stepping into old shops and cafés with a past that is still palpable today, and buying quirky objects and books in the shop of the Cinema Museum inside the Mole Antonelliana. We did more shopping in the Borgo Dora area, where a rich Christmas market is set up inside the old dock.

The Piemonte Card for 3 days was a good buy: it got us free entry to museums and onto public transport (except the metro), including the rack railway up to Superga. The rack railway ride and the belvedere on the terrace of the arrival station are fun and interesting. The Egyptian Museum, with its "unwrapped" mummies and the hall of gigantic statues lit as if in a film, is fascinating and evocative. The lift that takes you to the top of the Mole and the Cinema Museum inside it let you spend a winter afternoon in the warm, having fun with film tricks, old magic lanterns and reconstructions of film sets. We walked the historic centre up and down, with its wide arcaded streets and gigantic squares, and we visited the Royal Palace and an interesting exhibition of portraits of women from royal families.

For children it's also fun to visit the medieval village inside the Valentino park and stroll along the Po, but for our son, of course, the best part was going to the stadium!! Luckily Juventus won, so all three of us went back to Bologna happy. Hilary