Torino Sightseeing-what to expect with ticket purchases, entry queues, et.al.

I am waiting on replies, as I will be there in Oct. also - for 4 days and 5 nights. There is so much to see and do that now I wish I had longer. But I get the same sense as you. The only thing I have reserved so far is a food tour, but I will probably buy a few other tickets ahead.

We were there in early May of this year. We visited the Egyptian Museum, the Royal Palace and the Automobile Museum without advanced tickets. We had no problems. We were able to purchase on-sight and walk right in. The only place that was crowded was the Auto Museum and that was because of the school student tours.

Charylm, thanks for the feedback-that was what I was hoping to hear! I noticed that some of the museums offer guided tours by their staff-did you take any of those?

TexasTravelMom, I feel your pain-we debated for some time on how long to spend in Torino, some of which was due to my travel FOMO, but as you say, there is a lot to see and do in the city itself. Torino is also well positioned for day trips to several interesting destinations not far from the city (Sacra di San Michele, Pallazina di Stupinigi, the Langhe & Monferrato regions, and several others). We always agonize over doing day trips from a single base vs. multiple stops, and that was also the case with Torino, so we split the difference-we will do at least one day trip (either Sacra di San Michele or Stupinigi), then head to the Langhe/Monferrato regions for a more in-depth exploration (including exploration of the wine and food!). I'm still working on a plan to visit the Forte de Fenestrelle, which is difficult to reach by public transportation, so I will likely add a visit there to our transfer day from Torino to La Morra, driving the big east-west loop through the Val di Susa and Val di Chisone. That area looks very interesting (Roman arch in Susa, several former sites from the 2006 Winter Olympics in the area), so I am still debating an overnight stop, which would make a visit to the Fenestrelle much easier.

No, we did not. A guided tour or audio tour might be helpful especially for the Egyptian Museum.

We were in Turin in June for five days. We had timed entry for the Venaria Reale and the Egyptian Museum, but I'm not convinced that was necessary (perhaps for the rock cut chapel at the Egyptian Museum, which is a separate admission ticket). We went to several other museums (but not the Automobile Museum) without pre-reserved tickets and didn't encounter any substantive lines or a wait to enter after the ticket was purchased.

I also recommend the audio guide for the Egyptian Museum. Many museums in Turin have audio guides you can download to your cell phone and free Wifi. Make sure you bring headphones to have this option. The Egyptian Museum does offer tours in English, if that would be your preferred way of experiencing it.

We spent a week in Torino last October and loved it. We bought tickets the day before for the Egyptian Museum and the Royal Palace because we wanted to guarantee our chosen entry time. The Egyptian Museum was more crowded but manageable. I had the Decorative Arts Museum to myself:)

Torino is a fabulous city with beautiful walking areas and palazzos. We had delicious food and we were warmly welcomed everywhere. It is a bit of a hidden gem not yet discovered by very many tourists compared to other Italian cities.

We hope to return as there is much more to explore.

Wow, great feedback-thanks much! I found a page on the Royal Palace web site that discusses guided tours, so I sent them an email to see what they have to offer (there were no guided tour tickets that I could find on the web site). I would guess that tickets associated with a staff-guided tour might be worth purchasing in advance, but with an audio guide, it appears we could simply show up whenever the mood strikes us-not sure if my obsessive-compulsive brain will allow me to be that impulsive, but it is nice to hear that there is no hoop jumping like we experienced with some of our Milan sightseeing (our Milan tour guide compared the Last Supper ticket process as similar to purchasing tickets for a Taylor Swift concert!).

BTW we stayed at the Grand Hotel Sitea and it was perfect. Not crazy expensive given the quality in terms of gracious staff, lovely rooms, a superb breakfast and a perfect location. We would stay there again.

Yes, I haven’t even been yet but have it on the list for a return.

I was in Turin in mid-June this year. I had no problems walking up and buying tickets to the Egyptian Museum and the Royal Palace (I assume you mean La Venaria Reale) as well as other sites, including Musei Reali, Villa della Regina, Palazzo Madama, Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano. There were zero lines for entrance to any of these sites. Also, Torino was not crowded like other more popular Italian cities. It’s a wonderful city to visit.

Sigh, this is making me YEARN for Turin! I have a very detailed list of things to see & do there, but the Christmas to NYE hotel pricing, and the fact that "hey it's December and we're coming from Sweden, who wants to risk bad weather?" moved us onto Naples / Pompeii for that time period.

But it's planned soon!!! One You tuber mentioned not being able to listen to the Egyptian Museum audio guide as their wifi was down, I think we'd probably book a short highlights tour as it's a fairly large museum.

If you're interested in the Turin Shroud, you definitely want reservations. Hope you let us know how your trip goes!

The Shroud of Turin is very rarely exhibited. You can see the case in which it is held in Cathedral without any kind of reservation or ticket. There is also a small museum dedicated to it (not at the Cathedral) that is worthwhile. That museum was not at all crowded and I don’t think even sells timed tickets.

I second the suggestion of Grand Hotel Sitea. Wonderful location, rooms, staff, and breakfast. Don’t miss a drink at the American Bar in the lobby.

Claire and HK, I looked at (and liked) the Hotel Sitea early in the planning process, and they still have the Standard Classic room type for our dates-any opinion on those? There is also a link to the Royal Palace Luxury Suites (part of the same hotel?) that shows availability for a Deluxe Room for a bit more (but no suites at either hotel for our dates). I am also looking at the Turin Palace Hotel, which gets rave reviews on TA and booking.com, and they have some very nice rooms facing an inner courtyard (those tend to be quieter than rooms thaat face the street) for a bit less per night. There are also numerous AirBNBs available in Torino, so there is still a lot of choices. AirBNBs can be a mixed bag, but if we find one that has truth in advertising, it is always a beter bang for the buck than a hotel room, albeit without a staff to help with questions, taxis, etc.

Sandancisco, interesting comment about the audio guides-in general, I dislike them and prefer a real person if I can arrange it. It seems that investing in a guided tour for the Egyptian Museum might be a good idea, so I will look into that. I had read that the shroud will not be on display this year, and from other comments on this thread, that seems like a fairly rare occurrence, but that is certainly as good an excuse as any for a return visit!

We are also planning to visit the Palazzina Stupinigi and the Sacra di San Michele-are those also same day purchase, or is it advisable to purchase those in advance? I haven't or read any comments that suggest tickets for those are any more difficult than the museums in the city, so I will proceed with that assumption unless I hear otherwise.

Question about the Auto Museum: is that museum in the same building that has the former test track on the roof? I'd love to see that if it is accessible, and if it is in the same bulding, that would be even better.

TexasTravelMom, I am also considering a food tour, called I Eat Food Tours, that was recommended to me by an acquaintance on Tripadvisor who is a food connoisseur. You may have already booked with them, but if not, here is the link for your perusal: https://ieatfoodtours.co.uk

Loved Turin! We visited in October 2024. We toured the Royal Palace - without advance tickets & walked right in. Did not go to Egyptian - opted for the National Cinema Museum instead & had to wait in line for about 15 minutes (arrived early). It was an extremely interesting museum & totally different than any other museum. Turin is fabulous for shopping & eating! Lots of excellent little markets to buy picnic fixings too. Very walkable city. We stayed at the Hotel Roma e Rocca Cavour - around the corner from the train station. EXCELLENT hotel & very reasonable. Enjoy!

Thanks for the link! I have already booked with Do Eat Better (for my first day) so we’ll see. :)

No. The Auto Museum (Museo Nazionale dell' Automobile) is in a different location from the Lingotto Factory with the track on the roof top. We did not go there but were told the track was accessible.

Webdweeb, we had two Standard Classic rooms at Grand Hotel Sitea for our party - one on the street side and one facing the courtyard. They were slightly different; neither was clearly superior to the other (although I had a personal preference). I would book in that category again without hesitation.

Webdweed, we stayed in a Standard Classic Triple room which for the price €260 was quite worth it given the breakfast quality as well. We had a small sofa in addition to the bed, which was nice given we stayed a week. We faced the street but noise was not an issue as it is primarily pedestrian only. We looked at the Turin Palace Hotel and originally planned to stay there until we discovered the Grand Sitea. We were happy with our choice and liked the location better once we spent our time there.

Great feedback-this has been very helpful, not only for my original question but all the related topics as well.

Charylm, I will make a note of the different locations for the test track and Auto Museum, hopefully I can still fit both into our plan without too much breakage.

Claire and HK, you are among a rather long list of fans of the Grand Hotel Sitea, so I am taking a closer look at it with regard to our stay. The Sitea is definitely a better location for city center sights, particularly those clustered around the Royal Palace, which is a pretty long walk from the Turin Palace and the train station. I haven't done much research on the Turin metro transport system, which I had read is pretty good, but we prefer walking if at all possible, so that is a big vote in favor of the Grand Sitea.

TexasTravelMom, you clearly have your priorities in the correct order with the food tour right out of the gate! That is a good idea-food tours would seem to be easier than city sightseeing tours when one is still recovering from jet lag and the resultant mental fog, so I will give some thought to reordering our plans, and I will take a look at your tour operator as well.

My list for Torino keeps getting longer and is in danger of exceeding our available time-itineraries are always a zero sum game to some extent, so I always wrestle with that. I should have assumed that Torino would be no different from other large cities we've visited, in that a few days covers the highlights, but more time provides an opportunity for a more extensive exploration. Some of fondest memories are of past trips where we spent a week or more in a single city-not only was it less time spent on transfer of accommodation, it gave us more unstructured time to discover new things we had not known about, and those are typically the events we remember.

I think I've been distracted by the shiny objects called the Langhe and the Monferrato (plus Liguria and the Val d'Aosta to a lesser extent), with other jewels still revealing themselves the more time I spend reading about Piemonte. We both love fine dining (not necessarily in fancy settings, just the great food) and sipping great Italian reds, but we typically don't spend a lot of time touring wineries-we like enjoying their products a lot more than touring the facilities that produce them.

The Val d'Aosta, one of the adjacent regions I've been eyeing, has Gran Paradiso National Park, which really deserves more than a couple of days to appreciate, so I've been thinking about pushing it off to a future trip, one that includes a visit to the other side of the French border (Chamonix, Annecy, etc). The Tour du Mont Blanc has been on my bucket list for a long time, so the Aosta Valley and the French side seem like a good match for that, so I think it is time to move Aosta off the list of options for this trip.

The same can be said for Liguria, another adjacent region that been in and out of the itinerary. Liguria also deserves more than just a peek-the Riviera di Levante and Riviera di Ponente are very different from each other, so maybe I need to do the same with that option, ie, set it aside for a future trip. A long one way trip from Nice to Portovenere, with several stops along the way to explore the Ligurian and Cote d'Azur nooks and crannies, would be a great trip in and of itself

Too many great places, and too little time!

Webdweed, we walked everywhere from the Grand Sitea except once when my spouse opted for a taxi to the Auto Museum; primarily for ease. It is a beautiful walking city and we went across the river to their famous chocolate shop Peyrano and we also walked to their very large market square. They were the furthest points we went. If you look up Mimi Thorisson, she and her husband live there and share food recommendations regularly. She is a cookbook author and teaches cooking classes and he is a travel and food photographer. Both are highly regarded in their fields and they love living in Torino.

As I recall, there was only one English guided tour at the Egyptian Museum the week we were there and the timing didn’t suit us. The website suggests contacting them regarding accessing English tours.

I stayed at Hotel Concord Torino and highly recommend it.

https://www.hotelconcordtorino.com/

I totally agree with how Torino has captured my imagination - and I am now wishing for a whole week. I don’t sightsee quickly. I have the advantage, though, in that I will have already been in Europe for several weeks so no jet lag. Ha!

I didn’t even BEGIN to look at what is available outside the city center…. No time. I do have a travel planning professional friend who lives half the year in Torino - she said let her know when I am coming and she will make me a list. I will for a second visit when I come back to see more in this area.

Thanks for this post, and I am bookmarking it for the info in the replies.

I will be staying in Torino again in September for three nights. I booked the Grand Hotel Sitea so happy to hear so many positive comments in these replies! During our last time there - several years ago, we stayed very close to the royal palace.

The royal palace has a spectacular room with armory, including for horses. The mannequins/horses combo in many colors down the room makes a fantastic photo!

We were in Torino as a bridge between Italy & heading to Annecy & beyond. We attended the MITO music festival- loved it! Plus went up to Superga, and my husband went up the elevator of the large building in the city for views over the city. We saw the Shroud of Turin church & case - still worth stopping in to see that much.

For this coming trip I have the “Street Food Tour D’luxe/Tastes of Turin - Morning Gourmet Trail” booked. Also a timed ticket for the Museo Lavazza coffee. The Palazzo Madama was closed when we were there, so that may be on my list.

I haven’t stayed in much in the vicinity of Torino, but I will be heading to stay in Asti for their Palio & have a ticket for it. And Pavia before Torino.

I’m glad to hear that Torino still has not been inundated with tourists, yet.

It's nice to see how many Torino fans there are here-I got a good feeling about the city when I began researching a trip to Piemonte earlier this year and discovered how many interesting sights were in the city, along with how well positioned the city was for visits to other parts of Piemonte (and the adjacent provinces, as well as eastern France). We ended up pivoting to Switzerland, which was another amazing destination that somehow had escaped our focus, but I had Piemonte (and Torino) in the back of my mind ever since we got back at the end of May.

Great feedback (once again!) with regard to Torino sights and how to get to (and into) them-the Grand Hotel Sitea (as well as the Hotel Concord-thanks, Mary!) are looking better and better with regard to their location. Because of its proximity to Porta Nuova station, the Turin Palace Hotel would be a perfect location for an itinerary that was tilted more toward day trips, so if (or more correctly, when!) we return we will likely end up there.

Speaking of cuisine in Torino, I am now sipping on my first attempt at a bicerin-it needs some work since it my first try, but any beverage that combines chocolate, espresso and whipped cream deserves a lot of practice anyway! It just seemed like the perfect drink to have while I ponder our plans for Torino and the Piemonte. Speaking of Torino, here is a list of sightseeing "desirements" I have cobbled together from various sources (including this thread):

Sights and activities in the city center:
Royal Palace
Palazzo Madama
Egyptian museum
The Basilica of Superga
The National Automobile museum
The National Cinema Museum
The National Museum of Risorgimento
Food tour(s)

Day trips (or sights and destinations that are not walkable from the city center):
Pinacoteca Agnelli and La Pista 500
Reggia di Venaria
Palazzina di caccia di Stupinigi
Sacra di San Michele (possibly combined with a visit to Susa if driving)

We try to not fill up an entire day with wall-to-wall activities, so my gut feel is that this list deserves 4-7 full days to fully appreciate each one (at a pace we are comfortable with), and the day trips on the bottom of the list will require additional time for transportation. Of course, this assumes I don't discover any more interesting places to visit in and around Torino, which is unlikely given the abundance of great tips that are showing up on this thread.

Time for a bicerin refill-like I said, I need a lot of practice! :-)

Jean, I just saw your post-we are devoted fans of Lavazza coffees, so I need to add their museum to our list! I'd love to hear more about your "bridge" trip that combined Torino with Annecy-that seems like a great combo with the Val d'Aosta and maybe more of eastern France as well. Lots of interesting possibilities in this area! By the way, we are ending our trip in Pavia, which will include a day trip to the Oltrepo region south of Pavia. We met a fantastic tour guide in Milan who lives in Pavia; she convinced us to spend a few days there before we fly out of Linate airport, so we will do a walk of the old town and take a drive south to explore the Oltrepo, with our new friend accompanying us. If we have time, we might try to visit Cremona and pray at the altar of Amati and Stradivarius (only an hour's drive to the east of Pavia).

Overall, we have a total of 15 nights (and 14 days, including any transfer days) for our trip, which is in early to mid-October. We dislike overnight stops that are less than 3 nights (shorter is an inefficient use of time, IMHO), so with the above "analysis", that suggests 5-7 nights in Torino, including day trips. As I said, we have allocated the last 3 nights to Pavia, so subtracting those 3 nights and 5-7 for Torino leaves us with 5-7 nights for other destinations (ie, 5 nights in Torino means 7 nights in the Langhe, etc). I have already satisfied myself that the combination of the Langhe and the Monferrato have enough to do and see (beyond wine tasting and truffle hunting) to fill up a week or more, so that is the most likely companion for Torino and Pavia. With that much time, the Val d'Aosta could work as well, but as I mentioned before, it seems more logical to leave that to a future trip so we can expand on that location and use it as a waypoint for exploration of eastern France (or even western Switzerland).

One more thought about side dishes to accompany the Torino main course: we gave serious consideration to both Lake Orta and Lake Maggiore, but since we spent a significant amount of time on Maggiore (3 nights in Ascona) and Como (3 more nights in Varenna) on our May trip to Switzerland, we felt that we could forgo the lakes for this trip and focus on other parts of Piemonte. The lakes were nice bookends to the Alps itinerary "core", so it is highly likely we will be returning to one or more of the lakes in the future.

Webdweeb, you may already know about this spot but I wanted to mention it in case not as you are already enjoying Torino’s famous beverage at home:)

https://bicerin.it/en/home-english/

Claire, I think that is the same place that was depicted in Stanley Tucci's episode on Piedmont, which I watched again last night. I had never heard of the beverage until I watched that episode, and since coffee and chocolate are two of my major food groups, I of course had to give it a try myself. I'm certain Caffe al Bicerin's version is much better than mine-getting the top layer of whipped cream to stay as a layer was easy, but keeping the chocolate and espresso layers separate has been the big challenge for me. The mistake I made the first time was simply sitting the cup with the chocolate layer under my espresso machine's spouts, so I will be experimenting on how to best add the espresso layer so it stays as a layer, at least until I drink it. Practice makes perfect, as they say! :-)

Hi again, Cremona is a special one for me! It was my first new city after the 2020-21 Covid shutdown. I took a taxi to my Hotel Duomo Cremona, checked in, and walked the half block into the piazza. Wow, that historical scene of the ancient clock tower, cathedral and surrounding buildings & archways, and I couldn’t keep the tears at bay…I am in authentic Italy again! A violinist was playing the evocative “The Prayer” in the piazza, too. (Heart)

If you go to Cremona, there’s short concerts in the modern concert hall in the Stradavari museum on weekends. Look up photos to see the unusual design of that concert hall! Great acoustics!

Yeah, for hearing you’re going to Pavia! I will be staying at the Arnaboldi Palace - sounded fun. Currently I have the Castello Visconteo di Pavia & civic museum and Certosa di Pavia penciled into my itinerary.

We differ on our preferred amount of moving hotels - it’s all good either way! : ). For the trip coming in Fall, I will be back at Stresa - favorite place to get over jet lag and just enjoy. Then Pavia, Torino, Asti, Piacenza, Modena, Ferrera. Then I meet up with my daughter for another week of traveling for her first time in Italy.

The Annecy trip was in 2016 with my husband: Venice, Vicenza, Parma, Torino, Annecy, Lyon (stayed in a traboule apartment!), and finished in Paris.

Looking forward to reading your trip report when you’re back!

Jean, thanks for the feedback on Cremona-I don't play the violin (guitar and mandolin are my instruments of choice, along with vocals), but have experience in several concert and symphonic choirs, so I am a big a fan of all manner of "classical" music. The phrase "classical music" is a bit too similar to that of the recently popularized term "yacht rock" for what is a pretty wide variety of 70s and 80s music (both overgeneralize the music they are attempting to categorize), but I digress!

We have friends that prefer shorter and more frequent stops than we do, so clearly there is no wrong answer on that subject! We oscillate some ourselves on long vs short stays, particularly if a long stay is in accommodations we don't care for-those sometimes turn into a few shorter stays by necessity!

We are also staying at the Arnaboldi Palace and got a very positive local scouting report from our Pavia friend-she spoke to the staff there and was very impressed with the place (sort of a hotel/bed & breakfast/castle stay, hard to categorize!), and it is in a great location for exploring the older part of Pavia, but maybe not so much for day trips out of the city center. since it is in a ZTL, s lots of narrow streets and the essential need to be on the approved list for entering the zone. Our friend will be recommending the Arnaboldi to her Milan tour clients as an alternate to staying in Milan-she commutes to and from Milan herself for her tour guide work (35-40 minutes each way, so easy peasy), and she clearly prefers the laid back and quieter ambiance of Pavia to Milan, especially when she compares the old town to the Milan city center, particularly near the Duomo.

Jean, if you have time (and a car), you might want to check out the Oltrepo, the wine region south of Pavia. Here is a recent Guardian article that describes this area in some detail:

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/may/21/alternative-tuscany-italy-lombardy-oltrepo-pavese

Webdweeb, what a fun and delicious experiment! I haven’t seen the episode you mention but the place is quite popular so I am guessing it has had some press.

Thankfully, even my half-baked attempt at a bicerin was still pretty good-the Lavazza Super Crema definitely helped with the flavor! I plan to experiment with the thickness of the chocolate mixture, which has some milk in it-it seems that if I make it thicker, it will stand up a bit better to the espresso that is layered on top. You should definitely check out the Stanley Tucci series, lots of beautiful scenery as background for a series of foodie fever dreams. He spends a fair amount of time in Alba during one year's truffle festival (maybe last year, not sure), and there is a hilarious scene where some person carrying around an uber-expensive white truffle at an auction drops it on the floor, to the horror of the auction crowd, then proceeds to try to pick up all the truffle crumbs. But the scenery in the shots is almost worth the time alone-I have watched that episode 4-5 times just so I can gaze at those beautiful rolling hills, covered with the colors of autumn. New England fall foliage with truffles, Michelin star restaurants and world class Italian wines-what could be better? :-)

I managed to resist the pull of Liguria and the Val d'Aosta, so we now have a total of three overnight stops: 6 nights in Torino (at the Hotel Grand Sitea), 6 nights in La Morra (at the Relais Le Rocche) and the last three nights in Pavia (at the Arnaboldi Palace). I already had a thread ongoing on the overall trip plan, so I posted the details there if anyone is interested in reading it (or taking potshots at my plan!).