Fair warning: this one's a bit heavy on the text, kids, because this particular trip to Torino was quite full of nostalgia (and, of course, good food!) for me. I got to take Mike to a couple of places I'd seen before, but not in almost 10 years, and to one place new to both of us that's been on my list for the same amount of time, and it was glorious. Glorious, I tell you! You've been warned, though. Read on at your own risk (...of boredom...).
Waaaaaay back in June, Mike and I decided to head south to Torino in order to view the mysterious (and controversial) Shroud of Turin--the real one, which only goes on display every 5-10 years. I have to confess, I'm not a true believer; I think the thing was made during the Middle Ages (this guy makes an excellent argument to that end), but I'll also admit that it's remarkably detailed and quite mysterious in terms of exactly how it was created. When we showed up for our 5:00-Friday-evening time slot, we got to walk a good half-mile through Disneyland-style roped walkways in some ridiculous heat. Thankfully, our group was the entire line, so we were moving at a pretty good clip, and after we watched a short and genuinely interesting video detailing the exact patterns on the shroud--facial and physical features; the crossed hands; and, of course, the grisly stuff (blood from nail/spear wounds and the crown of thorns and scourge marks)--we were herded into the Duomo. We stopped behind a railing facing the Shroud, which was horizontally mounted about 15 feet away from us in some sort of magical protective chamber and guarded by two guys in spectacular uniforms featuring tri-corner hats with feathers (!). We stood quietly during a very short speech and prayer, and then were graciously but firmly ushered out. It was posted quite literally EVERYWHERE--both online and in real life--that no cameras were allowed, and so I had only my cell phone with me, but I think they were forced to give up on the "no photos" rule, since no one pays any attention to that anymore, and so I got a couple of snaps on our way out.*
Behold! Unfortunately, it was far too dark in there to take with my phone a decent photo of the guys in uniform on either side of this thing, but trust me: they were something. (Far better high-res images of the Shroud itself, in both the positive and negative, here.)
After the Shroud, we had a couple of hours to burn before dinner, so we stopped in the the gorgeous little chapel of San Lorenzo (finished in 1680 by Guarino Guarini), which I hadn't seen since the very first time we went to Torino (2006...!), and Mike had never seen at all. It's my favorite dome in the city from the outside, and as I remembered it being rather spectacular and unique inside, we decided to duck in. Once again, we only had our cell phones, and so, APOLOGIES. This place deserves better.
JUST LOOK AT THIS THING. So incredible.
Such insane colors of marble!
Ok, so this one's a little out of focus, but it's still a pretty decent fish-eye view of the place. Wow.
You can't tell from any of my sad, sad photos (disclaimer: the last one here is Mike's, and is not even fractionally as sad as mine are), but it's a small octagonal church with 7 little chapels around the edges, and the 8th side contains the apse/choir, so that the floor plan is roughly a figure 8. The whole thing is this ridiculously detailed and gorgeous, and next time I'm going back with the real camera.
After San Lorenzo, we decided to head somewhere that would most definitely have air conditioning, and where better than a chocolate shop? We ducked into Baratti e Milano, famous Torinese chocolate maker and super fancy cafe, where we discovered, to our delight, that it was apero hour!
Ohhhhhh, snackies that are included when you order a drink, you are my favorite Italian tradition.
Post-apero, we headed to dinner, on the way passing this:
This city is positively packed with these enticing glimpses into what I can only imagine are fantastical courtyards inside the many, many palazzos here. So freaking enchanting.
Dinner was at a place new to us, L'Acino...
So very festive and welcoming!
...where we shared a baked onion stuffed with Raschera cheese and sausage from Bra and (both local to the Piemonte, and holy wow); then Mike had a plate of tajarin (the Piemontese word for tagliolini) with Bolognese sauce, and I had beef agnolotti (small filled pasta) in a butter-sage sauce. We split a plate of beef roast braised in Barolo with a side of roast potatoes, and, not quite figuring that enough was enough, caught some gelato on our walk back to the hotel. (Best amarena I've ever had, hands down. And I've eaten a lot of the stuff.)
And now, to the photos! Seriously, this thing is so high over the valley floor that you can see it coming for miles (it's 962 meters, or about 3100 feet, above sea level). Sadly, none of my long-distance photos through the car window came out, so you'll just have take my word for it that this thing is impressive, even from far, far away.
Most of the way up Monte Pichiriano, you get these little glimpses through the trees.
And then, at the top, after a lovely little walk, is this.
This.
And then, if you're a bit of an idiot, this: sandwiches and frothy, sweet, frozen espresso at the cafe because you've arrived an hour and a half prior to the afternoon opening time. (Thankfully, Mike was a pretty good sport about that little oopsie. I'm just glad they had food, water, and shade up there!)
Ahem...moving on. When the monastery reopened after siesta hour, here's what we saw on our approach.
Looking up inside the tower on the right in the photo above. This place is massive. (It's 26 m, or 86 feet, tall.)
The Stairway of the Dead, the right wall of which, along with that towering exterior facade, dates to the mid-12th century.
No one explained this explicitly, but I'm assuming it's called "The Stairway of the Dead" because of these ancient tombs that line two of the walls around it.
At the top is the remarkable Door of the Zodiac, which was carved in the early 12th century, and is in near-pristine condition.
Romanesque doorway with Savoy-era panels, leading to the main sanctuary. Of course that's a 1st-century Roman tombstone embedded in the wall to the above-left of the door, because Italy.
Inside the sanctuary, which is about 2/3 of the way up inside the monastery. (It just keeps going up and up, apparently.) This part of the complex was constructed between 1160 and 1230, with major restoration work completed in 1937.
There are quite a few 16th-century frescoes in this sanctuary, all beautifully restored.
Supposedly, the church contains 139 column capitals, although I got tired of trying to count, and so can neither prove nor disprove this claim. They're mostly pretty fantastical, though, and old.
View from the second terrace outside of the sanctuary. These are the ruins of various monastic buildings constructed between the 12th and 14th centuries.
Look how high up we are. Sheesh.
Side of the monastery, from ruin-level.
Yes, ok, fine. I took about a million slightly different versions of this shot, but look at this place. It's genuinely awesome.
We began day 3 with pastries and a mini-sandwich and coffee at some random little cafe with genuinely friendly baristas near our hotel, which was in a part of town we'd never spent time in before. I really enjoyed getting to explore a new area of the city--we even found a giant Sunday-morning books-and-music market, in the same piazza where there'd been a fruit-and-veg market the day before! Ohhhh, to live in a neighborhood like that, with abundant and good espresso and markets and Italian food everywhere. Sigh. But I digress.
Ooh, one more digression, though. After breakfast, we hopped in the ol' rental and set out to visit Stupinigi, which I had seen before, back in 2006, and about which I've been yapping to my poor husband ever since. It's a Savoy hunting lodge on the edge of the city, and when I first visited, it was quite underdeveloped for tourism. The only way I could get in was to join a tour group of Italian schoolchildren, whose tour was, of course, in Italian. It was weird. And I wasn't sure if photos were allowed, so I tried to take a couple of surreptitious ones, only to find that I'd bumped the camera settings out of whack, and everything came out dark as night. And then I got onto the bus that I thought would take me back into the center, only to find myself getting further and further into the countryside. In a bit of a panic (this was well before the age of Google Maps and me having my own phone), I got out of the bus in front of what I think was some sort of hospital or nursing home, where, with my terrible and rudimentary Italian, I asked an old lady how to get back to familiar territory, and as she was headed the same direction, she kindly guided me back into the city. And that, friends, is what I associate with Stupinigi: getting lost. And incredible, otherworldly art.
The approach to Stupinigi is lined with these looooong brick buildings, which I can only assume were some sort of outbuildings for the lodge itself (stables, workshops, maybe even servants' quarters...?) Whatever the case, they're rather intriguing to me, and quite charming.
Those buildings branch out into a semicircle around these buildings...
...which lead to the main lodge. (Ok, let's just call it what it is: a palace. Seriously. They still call this a "lodge"??) This thing was designed and built by good ol' Juvarra (who built such things as this staircase in Torino, along with about a zillion other marvelous baroque-y things for the Savoys) starting in 1729, and expansion continued until the end of that century. The size and beauty of the place made it a popular venue for the weddings of nobles and royals, and supposedly, it even served briefly as a residence for Napoleon.
Inside, we went first through the refurbished stables, which contain the original bronze stag from the palace roof. (You can just barely see its replica in the photo above this one.)
These wooden medallions (at least a meter high) carved during the 1770s and 1780s line the walls and depict the original Savoy counts from the middle ages.
Next, we went through the library, although why they call it that is a mystery to me. There are no books here, people. No books.
There are, however, several utterly bizarre paintings of Savoy children, who apparently dressed like perfectly shrunken versions of the adults, complete with corsets and wigs. Poor little things.
After traipsing trough a few other fancy, fancy rooms, we ended up in the one room I remember from last time: the Central Hall. This is one of the most remarkable indoor spaces I've ever seen, since the bulk of the decoration on the walls is trompe l'loeil. Translation: it's mostly fake. Painted on.
The fluting on these columns? Painted on. I could have spent hours in here.
Medallions on the ceiling? Painted on. As it turns out, Juvarra was also a set designer, which explains how he had the proper skill set to accomplish this entire ginormous room full of nearly-unbelievable tricks of the eye. (He also had an entire army of students and assistants to help out.)
St. Ubertus chapel, just off the Central Hall. (Fittingly, St. Hubert is the patron saint of hunters. And also, all of the molding over that round window is trompe l'oeil.)
The ceiling paintings in this entire building were astounding. (This room is just called the Anteroom.)
Ivory-inlaid desk (18th C.) in the bedroom of Margherita of Savoy.
I remembered this, too: 18th-century music cabinet decorated with pastework, rather than carved.
Another stunning ceiling in the small hexagonal hall preceding the Dining Room.
One wall of the hexagonal hall, which made me feel like we were surrounded by a giant fancy Easter cookie.
The Game Room, which is painted with all sorts of bizarre creatures.
Like this thing. Er...is it a lion? Is it a dog? Who even knows? Who can say??
More cabinetry from the 1770s. Look at that inlay.
After a couple of outrageously good sandwiches and a last round of quality espressos at the Bar Gelateria Stupinigi (in one of those excellent brick buildings, and a place I stopped the last time through here, as well!), we hit the road and headed for the San Bernardino pass back to Zürich. I know I've mentioned this before, but this route contains no fewer than 12 castles/forts/ruins of the same, and I'm pretty sure I've missed a few. I had the ol' camera at the ready this time, though.
This last one, Castello de Fenis, might be worth a visit one of these days.
And that was Torino. It was really exciting to explore new things in a place so familiar, and I know there's much more to be found there--this thing! this complex! this basilica!** and other things! Plus, it's hard to argue with the food and wine there, and the language is just so gorgeous. (Things which, I suppose, are true about most of Italy. At least, in our experience.) In all honesty, I'm already looking forward to going back, whenever that may be. Love that place.
Next up: we return to Nendaz and environs for the Alp horn festival. And a few other delightful new things.
*Unlike the graceless, selfish, reprehensible cretin (I have other choice words I'd like to use here, but this is a relatively family-friendly platform!) who, during the silent time after the prayer, used his STUPID LOUD AND CLICKY CAMERA to take at least 40 photos. All in a row. All from the same angle, because we were standing still, for crying out loud. I genuinely wanted to punch him, because while some of us were there as tourists or curiosity-seekers, some people were there to be reverent and to reflect. In our group alone, there were at least 20 bescarved and beskirted ladies who'd obviously come from far away as part of a pilgrimage of some sort. I suppose that maybe hitting that stupid kid might have marred everyone's experience even more, but still. He needed to be taught a little respect in a very memorable way, in my humble opinion. (That was two months ago and I am still filled with rage.)
**Which I've seen already, sorta, back in 2006, but it was in the thickest fog imaginable, and then I got a bit turned around trying to get back down the mountain. Yes, that first trip was full of adventures in transit.
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