A Portrait of Turin

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Ramses II, Jesus, and Federico Fellini

If you thought London's British Museum was the place to go for the single greatest collection of Egyptian antiquities outside of Cairo, you thought wrong. The Savoy family's penchant for Egyptiana dates back to 1630, and the royal collection formed the basis of Turin's Museo Egizio, the repository for a staggering 30,000 artifacts dating back 6,000 years and covering some 4,500 years of Egyptian history. Among the treasures are a granite statue of Ramses II, the reconstructed Temple of Ellesija, and a library of papyri worthy of Alexandria, including the Book of the Dead, the Papiro delle Miniere (the world's oldest map), and the Papiro dei Re (the only known ancient document to list all the pharaohs in order).

Upstairs in the same palazzo is the Galleria Sabauda, a museum of Old Masters that showcases Turin's cosmopolitan tastes. In addition to the expected Italian canvases and altarpieces by the likes of Duccio, Fra Angelico and Bronzino, the gallery contains Italy's largest collection of northern European works, including masterpieces by Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, Rubens, and Rembrandt.

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If modern art is your thing, check out the marvelous GAM, or Galleria d'Arte Moderna, a treasure trove of 15,000 works from the late 18th through the 20th centuries, including such names as Modigliani, Chagall, Picasso, Warhol, Paul Klee, and Giorgio de Chirico.

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Just off the north end of the main Piazza Castello, home to the Royal Palace (see below), sits the unimposing Renaissance façade of Turin's Cathedral. Inside is the Cappella della Santa Sindone, a fanciful baroque domed chapel designed by Guarino Guarini to house the revered Shroud of Turin (www.sindone.it—possibly the only holy relic with an official Web site). The faithful believe Christ's body was wrapped in this ancient linen after He was taken down off the Cross. The shroud does have a weird, almost X-ray-like image of a man on it, with stains that correspond to Christ's wounds. Since the Middle Ages, the relic has miraculously survived a series of robbers, perilous journeys, and fires—most recently in 1997. The subject of much debate and speculation (and, one might imagine, an upcoming Dan Brown novel), the shroud has an entire museum devoted to its lore and mystery, nine blocks down Via San Domenico from the Cathedral. The relic itself is kept out of sight under firm lock and key and guard. It appears in public only sporadically; its next official showing is scheduled for 2025, but it has a habit of popping up more frequently.

There's no way to adequately describe the Mole Antonelliana using mere words. Perhaps that's why Italy put it on the back of its 2 eurocent pieces. This way, Italians can just show it to people without having to explain what it looks like: a pile of Neoclassical temples (with Gothic elements) stacked atop one another, topped by a vast, four-sided curving pyramid, another double-stack of temples, and a rounded spire that reaches an improbable 550 feet. The overall effect is, surprisingly, not ugly, though a bit hard to get used to. It briefly reigned as the tallest building in Europe—it's still the continent's tallest brickwork structure—and was built in the 1860s to be—of all things—a synagogue.