Six days of Venice, all water and mirrors and getting lost on purpose… and then the train sets you down in Turin and the whole world goes straight. Long roads running off toward the mountains, arcades marching in a line, a city someone clearly built with a ruler and meant it. I dropped my bags a couple of minutes from the big market and went straight back out, because who sleeps on the first evening in a new town. First thing over the rooftops was that spire, the Mole, sticking up like the city had signed its name.
The streets kept pulling me along until they opened into the square in front of the town hall, and there he was, all bronze and mid-swing. This is the Conte Verde, the Green Count, Amedeo VI of Savoy, sword up and an enemy folding at his feet. Pelagio Palagi modelled him in 1847 and they stood him here in 1853, a gift from King Carlo Alberto to the city. Turin was the first capital of a united Italy and the Savoy family ran the show. You feel it. The whole place struts a little.
After Venice, where every lane bends and tells you a little fib, all this straightness felt almost rude. You look down a street here and you can see clear to the end of it, and usually something is waiting at that end. This time a great dark dome came swelling up over the ochre buildings, tram wires strung across the front of it like somebody’s ruled pencil lines. I did not chase down its name. I just stood in the middle of the road, the way you can when a city is this calm on a Monday evening, and looked.
Then, because it is me, the grand architecture had to wait its turn. A small scruffy dog had claimed a patch of cobbles and was lying there like he owned the block, one ear up, entirely unbothered by any of it. I crouched down to say hello and got a look that said I was welcome to stay as long as I did not make it weird. Three weeks of cathedrals and canals in the camera and I will still stop dead for a good dog… some things do not change, and he got a quick page in black and white before he could object.
So that is Turin saying hello. Hat on, camera full, the iPad of works and a little stack of cards in the bag, ready to go knock on a few gallery doors while I am here. The plan for this stop is a working one. I want to see how the ink pieces sit next to what this city hangs on its walls, whether the movement in them reads the same to a Torinese eye. But that is tomorrow’s job. Tonight it is just me and a very straight, very handsome town, working out where the coffee is. More soon.
A morning behind the Royal Palace with the squirrels and a marble head wearing a pigeon, then down to Piazza San Carlo, where half the galleries were shut for August and one show stopped me dead.
I could not sleep, so I walked Turin awake. A Roman gate at first light, a mad stone dome, the Mole up close, the river holding a bridge upside down, and my favourite thing in the whole city, a little green bull that spits cold water.
My last Venice morning, and the famous rooftop everyone climbs for the view has been shut for a year. No matter. I had the Rialto at dawn, an empty St Mark’s, and then the rain turned every lane into a mirror.
