Roving Reporter Post 2

CZ and I have been walking all over the city of Turin today, getting the lay of the land. We took off after breakfast and started walking. We started out near Porta Susa train station and walked towards the Duomo.

At the Duomo, which is where the Shroud of Turin is kept (almost always under a shroud of its own), we were practically commandeered by two old men, some sort of docents, who wanted to explain the Shroud to us in great detail, give us brochures about it, explain some restoration in progress after a fire in the chapel where the Shroud was kept (I think), and point out the offering box. Every word of this was in rapid Italian, only about two-thirds of which I understood, but they seemed delighted that we could understand any of it. They were so enthusiastic that we felt it would be rude not to listen. It really became rather funny, because we'd think they were finished, but back they'd come with some more material or explanation! We noticed, too, that the Duomo in Turin was one of the few places we saw people who looked like they were actually there to worship. We really didn't see tourists wandering around with cameras.

In the area of the Duomo we also found what looked like an old Roman wall (with medieval renovations) called the Porta Palatina, the Palazzo Reale, an enormous square with long views in three directions, the Palazzo Madama, and the Teatro Regio, where operas are performed.


About those long views: Turin is a very Baroque city with straight avenues and lots of grand buildings with ornate windows. It's more like light-colored, elegant Paris than dark, earthy Renaissance Tuscany. Many of the streets, which are all cobblestone, are lined with porticos. There are tiny vendor spaces inside some of the columns along the porticos. And to keep the grid from becoming boring, every so often the streets open up into a vast square. And you need this variety, because unlike gridded NYC, there's not a single tree along any street.


We kept walking down the via Po towards the river, over the bridge, and straight up a long hill on the other side and into a residential neighborhood.
CZ just kept going, past all the appetizing pasticcerias and pizzerias and a place that sold homemade pasta. At one point I called after her, "Where are you going? We can't see the entire city, you know! It's much too big!"

"Not with that attitude, we won't!" she shouted back.

We kept going up 'til we got to a place where there were no sidewalks, turned a corner, and rounded past some apartments. There, beyond a fence, was a panoramic view of the entire city. CZ felt justified. The white we saw all along the horizon wasn't more clouds rolling in. It was all snow--on the Alps.


On the way back, we did stop in the pasta store and a pasticceria. But that's the next post.

Location:Torino, Italia