Touring Turin: Discover This Italian Gem

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If you've just decided you want to take in the 2006 Winter Olympics, scheduled for February 10-26, you're probably far too late to find someplace to stay in the host city of Turin, Italy. But though the games will end, the fans and their fanny packs will head home, and the snow in the nearby Alps will melt, the city will go on being one of the most intriguing places to visit in northern Italy. No less a connoisseur than the architect Le Corbusier called Turin "the city with the most beautiful natural position" (which no doubt sounds way better in French).

About a two-hour train ride west of Milan (less by car), Italy's fourth-largest city is unusual for the country because it's laid out on a grid pattern, in a northern European style. (Most of the others follow the roughly circular pattern that echoes their ancient walls.) Besides making Turin easier for the map-reading visitor, the long, straight streets offer striking sight lines. As you emerge from the main railroad station, for instance, you can look up the Via Roma and see the Piazza San Carlo, one of the main squares, an elegant open space surrounded by the arcades that help make the town a shopper's paradise. Under these arcades can also be found some of the most beautiful cafés in Europe, rivaled only by the renowned caffeine palaces of Vienna.

Turin (or Torino, as it is known to the Torinesi), long ruled by the dukes of Savoy, was the nation's first capital after the country was united by Garibaldi, the George Washington of Italy. With more than 16 million square meters of public parks and gardens and kilometer after kilometer of tree-lined streets, it still retains a regal air. The municipality has been called Citta' d'Acque (the City of Waters), because four rivers -- the Po, the Dora Riparia, the Sangone, and the Stura di Lanzo -- run through it.

Una Citta Bella:

An orderly layout and handsome arcades give Turin a regal air, and well-tended parks and elegant statuary make it a stroller's delight.

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One of the most appealing greenswards in this park-intensive town stretches along the Po. Besides being a favorite hangout of amiable anglers, this beautifully manicured stretch of the famous fiume is the site of the city's historic rowing clubs. Rowers can usually be found launching and landing their single shells, quads, and eights against the backdrop of castle-topped hills.

On the second Sunday of every month, antique and curio hunters can browse 'til they drowse just behind the large Piazza della Republica, at the Gran Balon open market. Not to be missed: the Museum of Cinema, located in the Mole Antonelliana, originally designed as a synagogue and, at 167.5 meters, one of the tallest and most distinctive towers in all of Italy.