Italy · City break

Turin City Guide

Some 18 kilometres of arcades let you cross half the city under cover. Turin was the seat of the Savoys, with dead-straight streets, wide Baroque squares and the most important Egyptian museum outside Cairo. One ready-made day route from Porta Nuova runs via Piazza Castello up into the Mole Antonelliana.

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Our walking tours of Turin

Ready-made routes from the station guide you through Turin, to the right spots from the very first step, with no planning needed.

Piazza Castello, Museo Egizio & Mole

From Piazza Castello with Palazzo Madama and its arcades into the Savoy royal residence, then down Via Roma to Piazza San Carlo and its historic cafés. On to the Museo Egizio, the most important Egyptian collection outside Cairo, and in the afternoon up the panoramic lift inside the Mole Antonelliana. If you still have energy, add the viewing balcony of Monte dei Cappuccini above the Po.

Piazza Castello. The walk starts on the square the Savoys built their capital around. In the middle stands Palazzo Madama. A medieval castle at the back, a dazzling white Baroque façade by Filippo Juvarra at the front. The arcades continue on all sides; Turin has around 18 kilometres of them, so you can cross the city almost dry in the rain. The city's main axes radiate from here, with Via Roma south, Via Po to the river, Via Garibaldi west.
Palazzo Reale. On the north side of the square stands the Savoy royal residence, UNESCO World Heritage since 1997. One ticket covers several buildings, among them the state rooms with throne hall and mirror gallery, the Royal Armoury with one of the world's most important arms collections, the Galleria Sabauda picture gallery and Guarino Guarini's Chapel of the Holy Shroud with its dizzying stone dome. The Royal Gardens lie behind. Allow proper time. Rushing through doesn't work here.
Piazza San Carlo. Locals call this square their drawing room, a strictly symmetrical Baroque space with twin churches at the south end and the equestrian statue of Emanuele Filiberto in the middle, known in dialect simply as the "Caval ëd Brôns". Under the arcades sit the city's historic cafés, Caffè Torino and Caffè San Carlo, with stucco, mirrors and prices from another era. Order a bicerin, the Turin layering of espresso, drinking chocolate and cream. It was actually invented a few streets away, at Caffè Al Bicerin by Piazza della Consolata.
Museo Egizio. The heart of the day is the Museo Egizio, founded in 1824, the world's oldest museum devoted to ancient Egypt and, after Cairo, the most important collection anywhere. Four floors of sarcophagi, papyri and complete tomb assemblages, among them the almost untouched tomb of the architect Kha and his wife Merit, plus the darkened Gallery of Kings with its pharaoh statues. Book a timed ticket in advance or you'll queue. And take the audio guide or a tour. Without one you lose the thread in all that material. Allow two and a half to three hours.
Mole Antonelliana & Cinema Museum. 167 metres tall, begun as a synagogue and pushed ever higher by Alessandro Antonelli. Today the Mole is Turin's landmark and even appears on the Italian 2-cent coin. Inside sits the National Cinema Museum. You lie back on red loungers in the vast hall watching films, while a ramp spirals up around you through the history of cinema. The glass panoramic lift rises straight through that hall to 85 metres in a little over a minute, and from the top you look across the rooftops to the Alps. Closed Tuesdays, and the lift needs its own ticket. Book it ahead.
Monte dei Cappuccini. If you still have the energy, add this viewing balcony, across the Po bridge, then 10 to 15 minutes uphill to the church of Santa Maria al Monte. From the terrace in front, the whole city lies at your feet. The Po in the foreground, the Mole in the middle, the Alpine chain closing it off on clear days. The National Mountain Museum sits right next door. It's at its best in the last hour before sunset, when the façades turn warm.

Planning your visit

One day is enough. The route from Porta Nuova runs three kilometres across the Piazza Castello to the royal palace, on to the Piazza San Carlo, the Egyptian Museum and the Mole Antonelliana with its cinema museum and glass lift. Around eighteen kilometres of arcades carry you through half the city without getting wet. The Egyptian Museum counts among the most important outside Cairo. Five evening tips are ready, and the wine hills of the Langhe are an hour away by train.

Going out & nightlife

Rooftop bars

Piano 35. Bar and restaurant on the 35th floor of Renzo Piano's skyscraper, behind glass inside a planted greenhouse. Turin's dead-straight streets below you and the Alps on the horizon. Go for the aperitivo rather than the full menu and the price works out.

Nightlife quarters

Piazza Vittorio Veneto & Quadrilatero Romano. Turin invented the aperitivo, and in the evening you see it straight away. Under the arcades of the huge Piazza Vittorio Veneto and in the narrow lanes of the Quadrilatero Romano, people stand outside the bars glass in hand. Two districts ten minutes apart. One wide and grand, the other tight and loud.

Food & restaurants

Consorzio. No-frills Piedmontese cooking in the Quadrilatero, with vitello tonnato, hand-made agnolotti and, if you dare, offal in every guise. Down-to-earth, very good and usually full. Book ahead. By day, the bicerin at Caffè Al Bicerin by the Consolata, a few streets away, is worth the detour.

Bars & clubs

Trivè All Day Bar. A bar on Piazza Vittorio Veneto that runs all day, with coffee at the counter in the morning, aperitivo and cocktails on the terrace facing the square at night. A good first or last stop, because something is almost always still going on here.

Stage & concerts

Teatro Regio. Turin's opera house sits right on Piazza Castello. Behind the historic façade there's a thoroughly modern auditorium, because the old house burnt down in 1936 and only reopened in 1973. Surtitles run above the stage, so you'll follow the evening without any Italian.

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Practical information for Turin

Public transport

Operator. Gruppo Torinese Trasporti, GTT for short, runs eight tram lines, over 80 bus lines and the automated metro in Turin and the surrounding municipalities. Around 640,000 passengers travel each day, and the vehicles together cover more than 56 million kilometers a year. In addition there's the Servizio Ferroviario Metropolitano, the metropolitan area's S-Bahn-style rail service run by Trenitalia, which links the stations of Lingotto, Porta Susa, Rebaudengo Fossata and Corso Grosseto. The fare framework for the city, the surrounding area and the region is set by the Agenzia della mobilità piemontese, which is why GTT tickets and the integrated rail-and-bus tickets fit together. For visitors, this means in practice that a single city ticket covers metro, tram and bus across the entire urban and suburban network, while for rail you need the integrated ticket variants.

Network. One metro line plus a dense tram network.

Modes of transport. Metro · Tram · Bus · S-Bahn (Servizio Ferroviario Metropolitano) · Sassi-Superga rack railway

Operating hours. The metro operates on fixed hours at both endpoints, Fermi in Collegno and Bengasi in the south. Monday to Thursday, service begins at 5.30 am, with the last departure at both ends at 9.30 pm, after which the M1S replacement bus line takes over from 10.00 pm to 12.30 am. On Fridays and Saturdays the metro runs straight through from 5.30 am to 1.00 am, with no replacement bus needed. On Sundays and public holidays the metro only starts at 7.00 am and ends at 9.30 pm, with the M1S then running in the morning from 5.30 am to 7.00 am and in the evening from 10.00 pm to 12.30 am. The M1S only stops at the metro stations and covers the whole Fermi to Bengasi route. The metro is fully automated, running driverless on the VAL system, and takes around 25 minutes for the full route. In August, GTT thins out or fully suspends many bus lines to a holiday schedule, while trams continue to run as normal.

Night service. The night network is called Night Buster and is a joint project of GTT, the Agenzia della mobilità piemontese and the city. During the season from 26 June to 12 September 2026, 17 lines connect the center with 29 municipalities in the metropolitan area. Service runs every Friday, every Saturday and on nights before public holidays, each time between 11.00 pm and 5.00 am. The first departure from the outer terminals is at midnight, the last at 4.00 am, while outbound from Piazza Vittorio Veneto the first bus leaves at 1.00 am and the last at 5.00 am. Frequency depends on the line, W1, N8 and S4 run hourly, N4, S5 and S18 every two hours. All night lines converge in a star pattern on Piazza Vittorio Veneto, where you change buses. No special fare is needed, the same single tickets and passes as during the day are also valid at night.

Buying tickets. GTT lists around 750 authorized sales points in Turin and a further 600 in the surrounding area, mostly tobacconists, kiosks and bars, and also provides a dynamic downloadable map of sales points. Machines stand at every metro station, accepting cash and cards, and dispense not only the City Ticket for 2.00 Euro but also the day pass for 4.50 Euro and the multi-day tourist tickets. Anyone who doesn't want to search buys through the TO Move app, where the range runs from the City Ticket at 1.90 Euro to the seven-pack for 21.00 Euro. The third option is Tap and Go, tapping a contactless bank card directly at the metro turnstiles and on the readers on newer buses. Paper tickets appear as Chip on Paper and must be stamped at the on-board validators, while passes alternatively run on the BIP chip card.

App and payment. The official app is called TO Move, available for Android and iOS, and it carries the whole city range, from the City Ticket at 1.90 Euro to the MultiDaily 7 at 21.00 Euro. Digitally purchased tickets remain valid for 365 days until first activated, while on the BIP chip card it's 730 days for the City Ticket and 360 days for the day pass. Anyone who doesn't want to install anything uses Tap and Go. GTT accepts contactless bank cards from the Visa, Mastercard and American Express networks at the metro turnstiles and on board newer buses, with the fare then at 1.70 Euro, below the machine price. Cash still works at the machines in metro stations and at sales points.

Which ticket. The standard ticket is called City 100 and is valid for 100 minutes with unlimited transfers, including one metro trip. It costs 1.90 Euro digitally and 2.00 Euro as a Chip on Paper. Contactless by bank card it's only 1.70 Euro per trip. The MultiCity six-pack costs 11.80 Euro, i.e. 1.97 Euro per trip, and so pays off compared to paper, though not compared to the app. The Daily day pass costs 3.70 Euro digitally and 4.50 Euro on paper. Digitally it corresponds to 1.9 single trips, on paper to 2.25 am. So anyone taking two trips in a day pays roughly the same with the day pass, and from the third trip it comes out cheaper. For groups there's Daily x4 for 12.00 Euro digitally, valid for up to four people traveling together, which is 3.00 Euro per person. MultiDaily 7 bundles seven digital day passes for 21.00 Euro and may be spread across non-consecutive days. For a two- to three-day stay, the tourist tickets are the obvious choice, Tour 48 hours for 7.80 Euro digitally and 9.50 Euro on paper, Tour 72 hours for 10.30 Euro digitally and 12.50 Euro on paper. Two points worth calculating here. Two digital day passes together cost 7.40 Euro, cheaper than the 48-hour ticket, while three digital day passes cost 11.10 Euro, more than the 72-hour ticket. Anyone buying a Torino+Piemonte Card gets a transport ticket at the tourist office for 7.00 Euro over 48 hours or 9.00 Euro over 72 hours, with children aged 3 to 10 paying 3.00 Euro.

Fare zones. Within Turin there are no zones, the City Ticket covers the entire city and suburban network. For regional trains you need the integrated tickets, Integrato A for 3.90 Euro over 100 minutes in the first ring, Integrato B for 4.60 Euro over 120 minutes in the second.

Tip. The arcades along Via Roma keep you dry for eighteen kilometres.

Getting there

Main station

Location. Central terminus at the end of Via Roma. The second station is Porta Susa.

Long-distance trains. Porta Nuova is Turin's long-distance station, with 20 platform tracks, all step-free. The main Frecciarossa axis runs via Milan, Reggio Emilia, Bologna and Florence to Rome, Naples and Salerno, with some services continuing to Reggio Calabria or via Rimini and Ancona to Bari, Lecce and Taranto. A third line connects Turin via Milan, Brescia and Verona with Venice, Bolzano and Genoa. Italo also serves Rome and Salerno in parallel. Regional and Regionale Veloce trains run to Milano Centrale, Genoa, Ivrea, Susa and Bardonecchia. The station is connected to the Porta Nuova metro station, and the Sala Blu for travelers with reduced mobility is staffed daily from 7.45 am to 10.30 pm, accepting registrations up to an hour before departure. Besides ticket counters and machines, there's a left-luggage office, a pharmacy, a police post and WiFi. International trains to France don't use Porta Nuova but the city's second station.

Opening hours. The first trains, SFM suburban services, start rolling at 4.45 am. The first long-distance train leaves the station at 5.50 am toward Napoli Centrale. The last long-distance train is an Intercity Notte at 9.55 pm to Salerno, with the very last departure at 10.45 pm.

Airports

TRN

Into the city. The SFM4, SFM6 and SFM7 trains take around 30 minutes to Torino Porta Susa and cost 3.70 Euro. The Arriva bus takes 45 to 50 minutes to Porta Nuova and Porta Susa for 7.50 Euro. The Flibco shuttle covers it in 30 minutes from 3.99 Euro online.

Frequency. The train runs every 30 minutes on weekdays, outbound from 5.01 am to 9.25 pm, back from the airport from 6.00 am to 10.28 pm. Arriva runs every 15 to 30 minutes year-round from Piazza Carlo Felice. Flibco runs daily from 3.45 am to midnight every 30 minutes.

Local quirks

Coffee here is called bicerin. Espresso, hot chocolate and cream layered in a glass. A Turin invention.
The Torino+Piemonte Card doesn't include a transport ticket. Museums, castles and royal residences are free with the card, but public transport isn't. The tourist office therefore sells cardholders a separate transport ticket, 7.00 Euro for 48 hours and 9.00 Euro for 72 hours. This undercuts GTT's own Tour tickets, which cost 7.80 and 10.30 Euro digitally. It's only available at the tourist office counter, not from a machine.
A rack tramway runs up to the Basilica of Superga. From Sassi station, a rack railway has climbed 3.100 meters and 425 meters of elevation since 1884, averaging a 13.5 percent gradient. It has its own fares, 4.00 Euro uphill and 6.00 Euro return on weekdays, 6 am and 9.00 Euro on weekends. You can reach Sassi with tram 15 or buses 61 and 68. Bicycles cost an extra 4.00 Euro.

Good to know

Currency: EUR €
Emergency number: 112
Plug type: C · F · L
Time zone: Europe/Rome
Driving: right

Speed limits. built-up areas 50 km/h, outside towns 90 km/h, 110 km/h on expressways, motorway 130 km/h

In rain, the motorway limit is 110 km/h instead of 130, and 90 instead of 110 on expressways. Drivers who have held their license for less than three years may drive at most 100 km/h on the motorway and 90 km/h on expressways. Within built-up areas, 50 km/h is the rule, though signposted city roads allow up to 70 km/h.

Tipping. Not expected. Bills often carry a coperto or servizio. If you were happy, round up.

Tolls. Most motorways are tolled. Take a ticket on entry, pay on exit. No vignette.

Access restrictions. Many historic centres are closed to non-residents. Cameras read the plate and the fine arrives home months later. Hours and boundaries differ from city to city.