Turin

Savoy and Renaissance but also multi-ethnic. Baroque, but also a showcase for contemporary art. Turin, with its thousand faces, never fails to surprise and not even its food and wine are exempt from this singular outstanding fact. Chocolate above all: 18th-century Turin already had Bicerìn, a hot drink made from coffee, cocoa and cream milk. In the early 19th century chocolates made their appearance in a thousand shapes and forms: bombons, pralines, truffles, ‘cremini’ and finally Gianduiotto, when in 1865 Michele Prochet combined cocoa with Piedmontese hazelnuts. Turin and its district are still Italy’s largest chocolate production centre today: alongside the large sub-alpine labels of Ferrero, Caffarel and Streglio are names such as Stratta, Baratti&Milano, Guido Gobino and Peyrano, as well as numerous other hand-made production shops.

Vermouth, whether sweet or bitter, from a recipe of skilfully infused flavours, is a wine blended with 13 herbs and spices that Antonio Benedetto Carpano first began to mix in Piazza Castello in 1786: a fact that has also become part of sub-alpine tradition through prestigious labels such as Martini&Rossi and Cinzano. The aperitif is a rite truly typical of Turin, performed before supper in the most modern establishments and in the historic coffee bars, in the city centre porticos, in the Quadrilatero Romano or in the open air on the ‘Murazzi’ along the Po. Afterwards, in the city restaurants, you can celebrate not just the Piedmontese culinary tradition, with rich hors d’oeuvres, agnolotti, ‘bagna caoda’ and boiled beef – re-interpreted with creativity and contemporary taste, particularly by the star chefs – but also world cuisine, which is part of multi-ethnic Turin’s wealth. And each morning at Porta Palazzo, Europe’s largest open-air market – a goldmine of products, faces, smells, images and sensations from Romania, Morocco, China, sub-Saharan Africa and South America, with more than 60 languages echoing in the streets. It is not without reason that Turin is the location, every two years, of the Salone Internazionale del Gusto and Terra Madre.