Piedmont
The densely populated Upper Po Basin, a vast plain dotted with gargantuan factories and crisscrossed by motorways, is the site of Italy’s most important heavy industries. By contrast, the mountains to the west, on the border with France, are sparsely populated and have an economy based on agriculture and winter tourism (the main ski resorts being Bardonecchia, Sansicario and Sestriere).
The wine region of Le Langhe offers a landscape of terraced vineyards, old hilltop towns and, owing to the small number of visitors, is a quiet and peaceful region to stay. The region produces several noted wines, the best known being the sweet, sparkling white, Asti Spumante, from Asti, and the bold red, Barolo, from Alba.
Turin (Torino) is the largest city in the region and the fourth-largest in the country. Through the early years of the 20th century, it was the automobile capital of the world. It was here that the Futurists became so excited with the potential of mechanised transport that they declared Time dead – henceforth, they navely declared, everything would be measured in terms of speed alone. The city still remains the focus of Italy’s automobile industry. Fiat offer guided tours of their headquarters, where a full-scale test track may be found on the roof, while the Museo dell’Automobile (Automobile Museum), traces the history of the car on an international level. Turin does, of course, add up to far more than an infatuation with motor cars. The inhabitants boast that, with its broad, tree-lined avenues flanked by tall, handsome townhouses, it is La Parigi d’Italia (the Italian Paris). Uptown Turin is centred on the main shopping street, Via Roma, which links the city’s favourite square, the Piazza San Carlo, with its most dramatic building, the Baroque Palazzo Madama, which houses the Museum of Ancient Art, one of several nationally important museums in the city, and the Egyptian Museum, the second-largest in the world after Cairo. The famous Turin Shroud may be viewed in the 15th-century white marble Cathedral.
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