Joe and Patricia Gartman have spent the Christmas seasons from 2017 to 2019 in Italy. Here are photos from their time in Turin in 2017. We arrived in Turin early in December. There was a huge advent calendar set up in Piazza Castello. Every night the fire brigade arrived with a truck-mounted cherry picker to […]
Every winter the streets of Turin come alight with sophisticated electric installations by renowned artists – Joe Gartman investigates… Photos by Patricia Gartman Thomas Edison started it all, of course. Not content with inventing the light bulb, he strung dozens of coloured lamps around his laboratory for the 1880 holiday season. In 1882, his business partner, […]
Two decades ago Rachael Martin arrived in Italy, exploring the country by rail and dreaming of rooms with a view. Twenty years, one Italian husband and two kids later, she still has the memories of those first voyages of discovery… Photos by Rachael Martin Life on the train today consists of a group of Spanish […]
We had an amazing response to our Villa Sandi Travel Writing competition and it is with great pleasure that we can now share the winning entry… Our winner is Christina Riggs, and her prize is a break in the Veneto hills at Locanda Sandi, where she will be able to celebrate in style! When she […]
Incase you can’t decide on your ideal Italian city to settle in – we have made a list of the top cities for you to make the choice a bit clearer. 1. Rome – population 2,850,000 Italy’s brash, loud, vibrant capital is a confident, thick-skinned place, secure in its achievements and completely unsurprised to receive […]
In the woods and fields around the Palazzina di Stupinigi, outside Turin, between harvest time and Christmas, no animal big enough to be hunted was safe… The silhouetted figure on top gives a clue as to what this building was designed to be: a hunting lodge, a very grand hunting lodge. There has been a […]
Jane Keightley exposes herself to new experiences in the city that has become known as a centre for the avant-garde… Turin has always been well known for being the home of The Shroud and, more recently, the place where the car manufacturing company FIAT was based. FIAT became the biggest company in Italy and one […]
In the second part of our six-part series, Jon Palmer continues on the trail of the Grand Tourists by chasing after a few sedan chairs around 18th-century Turin, Genoa and Milan. Few considered Turin an important destination on their Grand Tour. It just happened to be the first city you came to. Back then, anyone […]
In the first of our new six-part series, Jon Palmer crosses the Alps into Piedmont to follow the trail of that uniquely 18th-century phenomenon, the Grand Tour The foundations of the Grand Tour can be traced back to the begin of the 17th century and a young squire called Thomas Coryat, whose travel journal was […]
We are at the second in a series of eight of the most memorable starring roles, next is the original ‘The Italian Job’ and the legendary getaway scene featuring the rooftops and back streets of Turin… The Italian Job (1969, Turin, directed by Peter Collinson. Starring: Michael Caine, Noël Coward) Michael Caine stars as Charlie Croker, a cunning […]