Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: Turin

  • Turin – Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli

    Located in a beautiful, although slightly incongruous, building on top of the former Lingotto test track is this small art gallery. I had a Torino + Piedmonte Card so I could get into the art gallery free of charge, but admission also gives visitors the chance to walk around the test track.

    The danger with merging these entirely different attractions together is that it has give the museum some challenging reviews. Here are my favourites:

    “The racetrack on top of the building was unidentifiable as only an asphalt covered area.”

    “I really wanted to go and see the track on the top of this iconic building. Having finally got there, i was told it was “Not possible” by a very stern looking Italian lady! We must to pay to go and look at an art gallery before we could go on to the roof – there were big glass doors and we could see out – so near and yet so far!”

    I like the idea that it wasn’t possible to notice the track, it’s perhaps one of the most improbable things not to notice. The actual reason for the joint admission requirement is for insurance purposes. It’s also possible to visit the track for those guests staying in the hotel which is located in the same building.

    There aren’t that many artworks in the gallery, around twenty different pieces of art. They did have two paintings by Canaletto, my favourite artist, which sufficed me, although there are also works by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

    The museum is named after the art collector Marella Agnelli who was born in 1927 and was married to Gianni Agnelli, the main owner of Fiat and one of the richest men in the country. This explains the link between the racetrack and the gallery.

    The entrance price, which I think is €10, is perhaps just a little rich given the number of artworks and the audio guide is extra, so the admission charge by this stage has made it expensive for anyone who isn’t bothered about seeing the track. The gallery has though put huge effort into making sure that visitors can find it, as the shopping centre has directional arrows nearly all the way around it.

  • Turin – Lingotto Fiat Test Track

    Lingotto was once one of the largest car factories in the world and it was constructed by Fiat between 1916 and 1923. They had what was then a pretty revolutionary factory concept of moving the cars up from the ground floor to the top floor via ramps during the assembly process.

    The factory closed in 1982 but it was later converted into a shopping centre and entertainment complex. The design work for this redevelopment was completed by Renzo Piano, who had been responsible for numerous buildings which I saw in Malta earlier this month.

    These tracks are also where part of the Italian Job was filmed.

    A view over towards the city and the mountains.

    The former factory building, now a large shopping centre and offices.

    More track photos. I thought that this might be busier than it actually was, but I meandered (in the walking sense) around the track mostly on my own. The track is in itself worth seeing, but the extensive views do add to the whole experience.

  • Turin – Museum of Human Anatomy Luigi Rolando

    The city’s museum of human anatomy has been in operation (note the word play there….) since 1739 and it has been in its current location since 1898. There’s now a deliberate attempt to ensure that it maintains its period charm, so there haven’t been any recent efforts to update or modernise the displays. Given the nature of what’s inside the museum there’s also a ban on photography.

    A few items from the eighteenth century collection remain, but the bulk of it dates to the nineteenth century. The staff member at the ticket desk was helpful and friendly, giving me an English map of the museum. Some of the highlights included the skeletons of a giant and a dwarf, the first Etruscan skull to be the subject of science, hundreds of brains, two South American mummies and a collection of wax medical models.

    There is perhaps an opportunity to improve the lighting in the museum as some elements were dark, and a lot of the exhibits weren’t captioned at all, so they remained something of a mystery. But, an intriguing museum if nothing else….

  • Turin – River Po

    The River Po is the longest river in Italy and runs through Turin and also through Milan and Ferrara. The bridge in the photo is the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele I, the city’s main bridge, and the current structure was built by the French during their occupation in the early part of the nineteenth century. There were some who wanted it demolished as it was a reminder of French rule, but Vittoria Emanuele I, the Duke of Savoy, kept it and it was named after him. A very fair compromise….

  • Turin – Views of the City and Mountains

    There’s a viewing platform at the top of the Museo Nazionale della Montagna, which offers some excellent views over Turin and is a reminder of just how close the mountains are to the city.

  • Turin – Museum of the Resistance

    This is the city’s Second World War museum, telling the story of the conflict from the perspective of people who were part of it.

    I didn’t take many photos as this is a museum without exhibits, by their own definition. For Italians this means that they are given headphones so that they can hear all of the videos and interactive features. For those speaking English, there are subtitles.

    The staff were incredibly helpful, offering a quick guided tour of the museum so that I could understand how it was laid out. The screens on the above photo are activated by hand movement and fortunately a staff member came to assist when it was too complex for me. The staff were excellent, some of the friendliest I can recall in a museum.

    This is just a representative display, highlighting how many people were killed by firing squad between 1944 and 1945.

    The screens showing videos from people who lived through the experience.

    This represents the four principles of the Italian constitution, those of yes to freedom, yes to democracy, yes to equality and no to violence.

    Visitors could leave a message with their thoughts on a post-it note at the end of the museum visit.

    An unfortunately blurry photo, but there were underground war shelters under the museum. These were only rediscovered during renovation work to the building, which must have been an interesting adventure for the staff who first went back down into them. They were used by the newspaper which was located in the offices above and the marks on the wall are where benches used to be.

    Modern benches placed into the shelter.

    What I think is an original no smoking sign.

    All in all, a nicely put together museum with staff who seemed really proud of what there was available. For those who don’t speak any English or Italian a visit is perhaps mostly pointless, but it’s an interesting concept to tell the story of those involved in the resistance movement during the war.

  • Turin – Hudson News

    Of no real relevance, but this is the first Hudson News that I’ve seen outside of the United States and Canada. It’s at the city’s main railway station and reminded me that my trip to the United States is only a few weeks away…..

  • Turin – Gruppo Torinese Trasporti (GTT)

    “Tourists can find our public transport system difficult”.

    I wasn’t going to write about this until the friendly women at the tourist information office said the above line. But since she did, I thought I’d have a random rant as I haven’t done that for a long time.

    Difficult certainly matches my experience, so here’s my random complaint about Turin’s public transport for tourists. Since most buses and trams look busy, GTT (who operate the network) are obviously doing something right.

    Anyway, in every European city I’ve been to over the last few years (and there have been a lot) customers can buy tickets in at least one of these methods:

    (i) On the bus with a credit card

    (ii) On the bus with cash

    (iii) At machines along bus routes

    (iv) On-line

    Turin hasn’t burdened itself with such ticketing advances. They’re still doing what Warsaw Pact countries often did 20 years ago and require customers to find a shop that sells the tickets which must then be presented on a bus. To make this ultra easy GTT have put on their web-site a PDF list of the locations, making it more exciting for visitors to have to work out where an outlet might be, rather than putting it on a handy map.

    Anyway, I could have worked this out and I know where there is a shop nearby as I saw the sticker in the window. But, the system is ridiculous in my mind (and likely just mine), so I thought I’d use the metro system. The city only has one line, which makes planning easier, which was built for when Turin held the Winter Olympics.

    I thought this was a marvellous idea as there are ticket machines at metro stations, so that would mean I didn’t have to walk into the city centre. This excellent idea of mine was ruined when it transpired both ticket machines at the metro station were broken. And, to save themselves employing anyone, there is neither a ticket desk or indeed any staff members before the ticket barriers at the station. This certainly saved money, although I noticed other customers looking confused and lost, so I’m not sure that GTT are doing much for the city’s reputation.

    However, all was not lost, as on the wall there was an advert for GTT’s new app. So, I find a GTT app on the Play Store and it doesn’t appear to have any ticketing capability. After some delving, it transpires there’s a second app for that, so I go to download it. I then get the message “this app is not available in your country”, which perhaps shows just a little lack of ambition on GTT’s behalf of how many tourists they might get wanting to use the app. Quite why GTT had bothered to translate the poster into English recommending customers get the app is also a mystery to me. But perhaps it’s not blocked on the US Play Store.

    So, for the first time in what must now be hundreds of cities, I gave up and walked. I’ve no doubt I could have spent 20 minutes finding a shop that sold a metro ticket, but it was only a 50-minute walk into the centre and I was already being rather lazy not doing that.

    Incidentally, GTT also run the mess of the bus service (mess being defined by my sole experience of the operation) that runs from the airport to the city centre. The sole ticket machine at the airport had broken (there’s a theme here) and customers had to work out where instead they could buy their tickets, and as an extra bonus, the bus then turned up late.

    For tourists who want to use public transport, it’s possible to buy the Turin card and then get a transport add-on. This would have been a simple option, so tourists are unlikely to get too stuck, but it was at this point that the tourist information staff member made her comment about GTT’s operations so it seems that I’m not the only visitor who has been defeated by the city’s public transport operator.

  • British Airways (Gatwick South to Turin)

    This is my first visit to Turin, flying with British Airways from Gatwick South. Initially the flight seemed busy and so I expected it to be a busy service, especially as they had been making announcements and sending texts during the day offering to place hand baggage in the hold for free. This is normally done to free up space in the cabin for what hand baggage there is, so I expected a busy flight. I was seated in Club Europe and it transpired that there was just two of us in the front cabin……

    We were around fifteen minutes late departing because the aircraft broke. Or, to be more precise, there was a problem with an on-board computer and an engineer had to switch something around.

    The crew member serving the Club Europe cabin wasn’t really strained during the flight if I’m being honest, there’s a limit to how much hassle two customers can be. Anyway, I opted for a gin and tonic as my drink, and the other customer opted for a gin and slimline tonic just to mix things up a bit (literally as well).

    The crew member was pro-active and visible for the flight though, as with just two customers it might have been easy for her just to sit on a jump seat and have a little rest. But she didn’t and the service was always attentive and efficient.

    British Airways had loaded the grand total of two meals for this flight, both different to each other, although both were based around salads. For reasons unknown to me the crew member had also heated up around eighteen rolls and scones, of which I had two and the other customer had none.

    The meal was fine and the ham tasted better than the photo suggests. The pork pie had some flavour, the generous amount of pickle added some texture and the Cheddar cheese was excellent. The lettuce leaf was more decorative, and it didn’t really perform that function with any great merit, and the tomato and mozzarella tasted as anyone might expect them to.

    For several years I’ve liked the scones served by British Airways and I take the Cornish approach to these things, jam first and then the clotted cream.

    The Alps.

    The suburbs of Turin.

    Turin as the sun starts to set. The flight landed on time, making up the slightly late departure, and I deliberately let the other customer in Club Europe disembark first so that I could follow him (just to the security area, not to the city centre). All  very efficient.