Magnificent panoramas are woven into Turin’s cityscape like car factories and the river Po. Sometimes, you do not even have to leave the town center to enjoy these spectacular vistas …
… but what you can see on any given day depends as much on the season (we took the picture above several years ago in the spring) and the atmospheric conditions as it does on the location.
Three reasons to get to a hill with a view of Turin
The most celebrated panoramic day-trip destinations of Turin are located a little out of town on the ridge that rises just behind the right bank of the river Po to the east of the city, but even at the top altitudes of this ridge (well over 500 metres), you cannot expect to have snowcapped peaks on the menu every day of the year.
On a cloudy day in June, the joys on offer may be on a smaller scale, although they are no less dazzling for that.
The most popular of Turin’s scenic beauty spots – the one with the highest number of visitors from both the city itself, the other regions of Italy and foreign countries – is a hill with a view, the Colline di Superga.
Number 1 on the list of reasons for this hill’s popularity: it is where you can find one of the city’s top tourist attractions, the Basilica di Superga …
… which was built in the early 1700s to mark the triumph of a military pact between the Duke of Savoy and the Virgin Mary.
On 2 September 1706, Duke Victor Amadeus II had climbed the hill to observe the battle between his Savoyard army and the French forces that were besieging Turin. When nearly everything seemed lost, the Duke promised the Virgin Mary a monument in exchange for an active intervention in his favour.
Before the day was over, the Savoyard army had driven the invaders away. As a consequence, Victor Amadeus eventually became the King of Piemonte, the House of Savoy eventually became Italy’s royal family, and the church he had built in honour of the Virgin Mary …
… eventually became the final resting place for all the members of the House of Savoy except the only two you will ever have heard of before today, Umberto I and Vittorio Emmanuelle II (if only because every city in Italy has streets named after them), who were crowned Kings of Italy and subsequently buried in Rome.
Reason number 2 to visit the Collina di Superga: the large number and variety of walks that start from the hilltop.
You can choose between several ambitious full-day hikes …
… including the 8-km-long Strada Panoramica which leads you from the shops and restaurants at the foot of the Basilica to the village of Pino Torinese.
For a shorter trip, you can simply walk down the Passeggio degli Aceri which starts in the forest north of the Basilica.
Either explore the Passeggio a little and simply come back the same way or stay on the trail until it meets one of the other local paths which loop back to the Basilica.
Obviously, you should take a close look at a map of the area before trying anything more complicated than a straight back-and-forth.
And if you do have not much time for a walk, there is always the footpath around the Basilica …
… which also has the advantage that it allows you to familiarize yourself with the drama that has embedded the Superga hill for ever in local folklore.
For many people in Turin and all over Italy, 4 May 1949 is the day their beloved sport of football died: this was the day when the plane carrying the team of AC Torino – winners of 5 consecutive national championships and practically identical with Italy’s national team at the time – crashed into the back wall of the Basilica. There were no survivors.
More than 600,000 people lined the streets for the funeral of the team which was known across Italy as the Grande Torino, and the shock of the tragedy was so deep that a year later the Italian national team took the boat for its trip to the 1950 World Cup in Brazil.
Even 70 years after the event, the shrine in the back of the Basilica – erected practically at the site of the crash – is never short of either visitors or fresh flowers that someone has brought to pay respect to the dead.
If, after your walk around the hilltop, you still have a little time left, just take a stroll around the large viewing platform in front of the Basilica. There are many interesting things to discover, ranging from the mystifying …
… to the droll (meet The Viking: the lost member of the Village People) …
… and, of course, the scenic, always the scenic, on a hill with a view.
And finally, here is Reason Number 3 why the Superga is so popular: it is relatively convenient to reach from downtown Turin.
Take tramway line no. 15 – there is a stop near the central train station of Porta Nuova – in the direction of Piazza Coriolano Casale and descend at Sassi Superga, one stop before the terminus.
From there, you have two options: either you take the scenic historical Sassi Superga tramway (one train every 60 minutes at the full hour) or the (also hourly) bus line no. 79. The bus stops to the left of the large tramway station on Strada Comunale di Superga.
