Barbaresco village and Langhe vineyards, Piedmont, Northern Italy.

Northwestern Italy

The beauty of northwestern Italy is its diversity. Piedmont's capital, Turin, is an elegant, easy city of baroque palaces, cutting-edge galleries and fittingly fabulous dining. While the region might have been one of Italy's 20th-century industrial success stories, it has also retained deep, lasting links to the soil, its wines and culinary offerings earning it the name of the ‘new Tuscany’.

Attractions

Must-see attractions

Museo Egizio
Turin
Opened in 1824 and housed in the austere Palazzo dell'Accademia delle Scienze, this Turin institution houses the most important collection of Egyptian…
Castello di Rivoli
Turin
Some 21km west of Turin, the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art is a giant of modern art in Piedmont. Its ambition and reach, not to mention…
Reggia di Venaria Reale
Turin
OK, it may not enjoy the weighty publicity of its French counterpart, but this is one of the largest royal residences in the world, rescued from ruin by a…
Forte di Bard
Valle d'Aosta
A fort has existed here for millennia and the current 1830s Savoy edifice is an imposing one, set high up upon a rocky escarpment at the jaws of the Valle…
Sacra di San Michele
Piedmont
This Gothic-Romanesque abbey, brooding above the road 14km from Turin, has kept sentry atop Monte Pirchiriano (962m) since the 10th century. It housed a…
Musei di Strada Nuova
Genoa
Skirting the northern edge of the old city limits, pedestrianised Via Garibaldi (formerly Strada Nuova) was planned by Galeazzo Alessi in the 16th century…
Grotta di Byron
Porto Venere
At the end of the quay, a Cinque Terre panorama unfolds from the rocky terraces of a cave formerly known as Grotta Arpaia. Lord Byron once swam across the…
Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile
Turin
As the historic birthplace of one of the world's leading car manufacturers – the ‘T’ in Fiat stands for Torino – Turin is the obvious place for a car…