Italy's first capital and home of the world's greatest Egyptian museum outside Cairo — a Baroque city of royal palaces, the Holy Shroud, and the aperitivo ritual invented here before it spread to the rest of Italy
Turin (Torino) is a city of 850,000 in Piedmont at the foot of the Alps, on the Po River. It was Italy's first capital (1861–65) under King Vittorio Emanuele II, and its Royal Palace complex (UNESCO World Heritage) is one of the largest ensembles of European royal residences. The Museo Egizio is the world's most important collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts outside Cairo — 40,000 objects including the Royal Canon of Turin papyrus, the largest surviving Egyptian administrative document. The Shroud of Turin (allegedly Christ's burial cloth, carbon-dated 1260–1390 but still disputed) is kep…
Turin was founded as a Roman military colony (Julia Augusta Taurinorum, 28 BCE) and became Lombard, then Frankish, then Savoyard from 1280. The House of Savoy ruled from the Royal Palace for six centuries, gradually expanding from a mountain duchy to control Sardinia (1720), Nice, Genoa, and ultimately the Kingdom of Italy (1861). After the capital moved to Florence (1865) and Rome (1871), Turin reinvented itself as Italy's industrial heart: Fiat was founded here in 1899, Juventus FC in 1897, and Lancia in 1906. The city hosted the 1961 centenary of Italian unification and the 2006 Winter Oly…