Road Trip Torino: Day 6

Today we finally had some sunshine! WAHOO! After school, I went for a walk while Dan did some work on the computer at school. I wanted to show you a little bit what Torino looks like. It’s really a very pretty city—it has an architectural unity that you don’t often see in cities. Paris has it, Washington DC has it, but not a lot of Italian cities have it. Here it’s because Torino, while an old city, was largely built or re-built in one era: the baroque. Many of the buildings have porticos, called portici (POR-ti-chee) in Italian. All told, Torino has 80 km of portici! You can go for a looong way without getting wet (except at the intersections). This week we're very grateful for the portici.

Historically, there’s a reason for the portici. It seems that at the time that these buildings were constructed, taxes were levied on buildings based on how much ground they occupied. So if you made the ground floor smaller, you paid less in taxes. The floor above could jut out over the sidewalk, giving you more room, but you only paid taxes based on how much ground your building took. So most of the buildings were constructed with portici. They’re really pretty, and I love the look they give a city. Bologna has them as well.

There are often musicians under the portici, and sometimes people selling things. Here, the singer (in the red sweater wasn’t part of the band, but he just joined in spontaneously:

Of course, when you’re sotto i portici, it’s hard to see the detail on the buildings around you. It’s always worth it to look up in Italy:

It’s also worth it to look in any open arched doorways. Sometimes you can see something really gorgeous. The shop windows and storefronts, though, are my favorites:

In this one you can see our dinner: I had the agnolotti del plin, and Dan had tagliatelli. We took them home and cooked. We ate them with some grissini (breadsticks) we had bought next door to this shop:

This weekend we’re going to a big market and also to a big foodie place called “Eataly”. We won’t have internet access, so I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till Monday to hear about it. Let’s hope we have good weather!

To be continued….

P.S. I am enjoying reading your comments! Our internet time is severely limited, and I have to choose between posting and responding. I promise a long post answering all your questions when I get home!