Turin's drawing room and its historic cafés
Turin is the city of arcades: it has about 18 kilometres of them, which allowed the Savoy court to walk from one palace to another protected from rain and snow, and which today make the centre an elegant, covered promenade, lined with shops, bookshops and historic cafés. Its most beautiful square, Piazza San Carlo, is called the "salotto di Torino", the city's drawing room.
Designed in the seventeenth century, it is a large rectangular square closed on its long sides by uniform arcaded buildings and, on the southern side, by the two twin churches of San Carlo and Santa Cristina, almost identical, the second with a façade by Filippo Juvarra. In the centre stands the bronze equestrian statue of Emanuele Filiberto, the duke who moved the capital to Turin in 1563, known as the "Caval 'd Brons", the bronze horse. Under the arcades are some of the most famous historic cafés of the city, such as the Caffè Torino, with a bronze bull, the symbol of the city, set into the pavement in front of the entrance, which tradition says brings luck if you spin on it with your heel, and the Caffè San Carlo. The arcades of Via Roma, the elegant shopping street, connect the square with Piazza Castello and the Porta Nuova station.
Tip: Turin is the home of the aperitivo and of vermouth, born here in 1786; try a "merenda reale", hot chocolate with small pastries, in a historic café.
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