Turin Day 3

Our third beautiful day in Turin began with a few more chocolate stops. Here's the highlights:

This place made us a caffe mocha of sorts: a dish filled with chocolate, espresso and whipped cream and nuts! They had giant sized dishes too...so good.

Fully caffeinated and sugar charged, we headed for the National Museum of Italian Unification in the  Palazzo Carignano (http://www.museorisorgimentotorino.it/). This year marks the 150th anniversary of the unificiation of the modern Italian state, and, seeing as Turin was the first capital of a united Italy, it comes as no surprise that this museum (along with the city) was fully decked out to mark the occasion. The museum is gigantic, walking you through a detailed history lesson in late 18th and 19th century revolutionary politics. There are historical documents, maps, flags, costumes, you name it, while sophisticated video presentations throughout the museum (trilingual, thank goodness) help visitors contextualize the movement and its figures with other major political upheavals, especially the French Revolution. In a way, it was great to see Paris first and to visit all the monuments of the their revolution...it all fit together! None of our photos turned out too well, so here's the city seal of Turin that formed the centerpiece of a large wooden box containing something that we can't remember!

Afterwards we strolled through the city. The day was so clear that whenever you looked west down a street you saw the mountains. It reminded us of Colorado!

In this photo you can see the flags of Turin in blue and white (with the bull= Torino) and the regione of Piedmont in red and white. One thing we love about Italian towns is the display of local pride.

Ok, best part. We took the snazzy new Metro--only one line so far, mind you--down to Eataly, Turin's organic grocery store (http://www.torino.eataly.it/). If you have been to a Whole Foods in the States, Eataly blows it out of the water. In addition to food, Eataly has numerous restaurants, and the basement level includes an incredible wine cellar fully stocked with all of your Italian favorites...with free tastings too! We had lunch down here, sampled some Piedmont wine, and even bought a book all about Italian wine put out by the Slow Foods Movement (which actually started in Bra, just outside of Turin).

After our adventures at Eataly we took a jog north, back towards the center of town. The photo below looks east from Piazza Vittorio Veneto on the eastern edge of the historic center across the Po River. While most of Turin is flat and stretches west towards the mountains, the slim, eastern side of town along the river has beautiful hills and nice homes tucked away up windy roads. We especially like the Rotunda at the end of Via Po across the river, resembling the Pantheon in Rome. Its dedicatory inscription gives the old Roman name of Turin in Latin, Augusta Taurinorum. 

We ended our day on this eastern side of town by taking the an old cable car 3km up the hills to the Superga Basilica high above the city.

One interesting fact about this church is that it also houses the burial crypt for the French-Italian Savoy family whose political and architectural influence on Turin cannot be underestimated. The house of Savoy ruled Piedmont from the 16th century to the mid 19th century.

The views west from the basilica are superb, but we got there around dusk, so they didn't turn out as well as we would have liked! Below you can see the Po river and the Mole Antonelliana and, of course, the Alps.