Turin

I'd say mostly no but I we did find an interesting Film museum there.... to me its like Milan or Genoa .... I'd live there but not sure I'd spend much vacation time there.

Turin is a fantastic city and easy to visit. A few minutes search online or of this forum will show you the way.

I agree with Mike, Turin is a fabulous city. My wife and I rented an apartment last fall near Via Po near the Mole and spent a great week visiting the city sites and surrounding area. We could've easily stayed on for longer. Whether you are after food, history, culture, etc., it's easily worth a relaxed week of DIY or organized touring. I won't list all the sites to visit - a TripAdvisor search will give you all you need. My wife photo blogs all our trips … you can see pix of Turin at https://graciamc.wordpress.com/category/italy/turin/.

I just watched a clip on Turin on my KLM flight. It looks amazing. It has a feel of Switzerland/Austria with Italian culture and food. What's not to love?!

I've been told that RS can't really add more to the already quite heavy RS Italy guide. Also, I have found lovely and interesting areas in other countries that are not covered much in the RS guides. I'm sure it is quite challenging to prioritize one area over another.

Is there anything there worth visiting?

A city founded by the Romans 2,000 years ago with nothing worth visiting would be so rare that I guess it would become worth visiting.

All the Royal Palaces in and around the city are Unesco heritage sites. The palace in Venaria suburb is the biggest one with Louvres style gardens, the one in Turin's main square is the most luxurious.

The Egyptian Museum is thought to have one of the biggest collections out of Egypt. Leonardo's self-portrait is... well, it's a self-portrait of Leonardo!

Do not ever assume that a place isn't worth visiting just because it's not covered in Rick's full-country book. Just be grateful for the omission, because in many cases his oversight means you can visit a great city that is not overwhelmed by American tourists.

What disturbs me more is the lag between a destination's descent into total tourist overload and the straightforward acknowledgement of the current situation in the books. On the other hand, if 80% (I made that number up) of the American visitors to northern Italy focus on the Cinque Terre, that leaves a lot of fertile ground for the rest of us.

I agree: a pleasant and most elegant city, not at all comparable to Milan.
Amazingly enough the reactions above don't mention the 16 kilometers or so of arcaded streets, which are almost a reason in itself to go.

I loved Turin - but the place pretty much shuts down for Easter and Easter Monday - the days we were there. The food and wine in the Piedmont region of Italy is outstanding.

The Palazzo Reale is absolutely gorgeous. Most of the places we wanted to see were closed, but Turin is one of those places where it's just nice "to be".

I don't know why the RS guides don't mention Turin - but I'm kind of grateful for the omission. The train ride from Lyon through the French Alps is beautiful.

As alluded to above by jules m, it has been reliably reported that the publisher says the Italy guide book cannot be any larger than it is. (And again I say: Thank heaven for that!)

Well said, acraven.

The books don't make any attempt to "cover it all" and they're appropriately unapologetic about that. Remember their target customers: Americans (who have the shortest vacations in the developed world), with little or no European travel experience, who want to see some highlights and have a great experience on a short vacation. That means they have to pick a relative few locations and skip over plenty of others.

In a country like Italy, if they tried to be comprehensive, it would become a very thick, very heavy book that would intimidate most people. Maybe if they broke it up into multiple volumes, but there are lots of ways to slice that. How about:

Rick Steves Italy: Volume 1 - The North
Rick Steves Italy: Volume 2 - The Heart
Rick Steves Italy: Volume 3 - The South
Rick Steves Italy: Volume 4 - The Islands (Sicily, Sardinia, and others)

You know, with the seemingly endless global boom in tourism, a scheme like this might actually work (from a purely mercenary/financial standpoint). But if you're going to do that for (or should I say "to") Italy, then why limit the expansion to just Italy? It could be it just as worthwhile to expand coverage of France, the UK, Germany, and other locations. That would require a massive scaling up of their work, and it would probably change their business in ways they might not want. Not to say anything about what it would do to all those places that were newly included. Just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean you should...

They've already quietly expanded to some extent. Now there are country books, city books, a book just for cruise ship passengers...there are plenty of other ways you could target a series more specifically:

Rick Steves Italy for Foodies
Rick Steves Italy for Baby Boomers, Retirees and Slow Travelers
Rick Steves Italy for Social Media Addicts
Rick Steves Italy for Art Lovers
Rick Steves Italy for Those Who Sheepishly Confess "We're Not Really Big On Museums or Churches"

Also worth considering: Not an insider, but as a longtime observer, it's clear that the company continues to evolve. The book business may have been their first real commercial successes (and all the ancillary stuff - TV shows, travel talks, etc. - may be where their hearts are), but these days I believe it's primarily a tour company - that's what's paying the bills. The book publishing business (in general) faces a very uncertain future (anyone remember printed magazines? how are those doing these days?). Guided tours are not at much risk of being digitally disrupted (just humanly overwhelmed).

I suspect those running the company have their own ideas about the best way to evolve. They seem to be thriving so probably don't need any crazy alternate reality ideas from me (but if they're ever completely out of ideas, they know how to find me...).

The new guide to Sicily sort of scares me. I'd like to go back, because my 17-18 days felt rushed. If I'm going to do it, I feel as if I should do it within the next 2 to 3 years.

Good plan, I think.

We were in Torino for 4 nights and were not able to see all of the things on our list. If you go, I feel the Torino + Piemonte card is a good value. For about $36 it provides free admission to many of the sites and discounts on others. The Egyptian Museum and the ride to the top of the Mole were highlights for us. Picking up a bottle of 2015 Fontanafredda Barolo for only 18 euro at the corner store was also right up there.

Torino is a great place to visit! We were there only four nights there plus one evening my husband took the train in from Alba for the opera. Very quick and easy to get there from the Milan airport. We spent all day at the Egyptian museum and many hours at the car museum. The car museum I went to semi-reluctantly because I have no interest in cars, but it's a fabulous museum, full of wonderfully wacky old cars and vintage videos about the role of cars in history and very creative exhibits, such as an entire kitchen made of car parts and also animals made of car parts. We highly recommend both museums. Great food, of course, the farmers market, and several charming neighborhoods. Renaissance art. Is it Rome, Venice, or Florence? No, but then neither is any other place on earth.

In the ranking of the Italian cities with the highest number of tourists registered in hotels and other types of accommodations, Turin come right after Rome, Milan, Venice, Florence, and the sea resort city of Rimini.
Therefore Turin is more visited than Naples, Verona, Bologna, Ravenna, Sorrento, Palermo, just to name a few.
The fact that Naples came after both Milan and Turin in the ranking caused a lot of consternation to the Governor of Campania (Vincenzo De Luca), who thinks that only Rome, Venice, and Florence could be possibly ahead of Naples in that ranking. His ranting over this fact made the news in all media outlets and all late night comedians had a ball making fun of his ranting.
The statistics are below. Many municipalities on the top 10 maybe unknown to you, but are major seaside destinations near Venice which are very popular with both Italians and Northern Europeans.

https://www.time2marketing.com/news/i-primi-50-comuni-italiani-per-numero-di-presenze-turistiche/

That's an interesting list, Roberto. I'm wondering where all those visitors to Ravenna were hiding the day I was in town (late June or early July 2015). Perhaps they are overwhelmingly Italians who go to Ravenna during their summer beach vacations and I was just there a week too early? Of does the head-count include visitors to nearby beaches? I don't want to keep saying Ravenna is shockingly under-visited (which was my experience) after seeing that it gets over 2.7 million visitors per year. I am flabbergasted.

The RS Italy guidebook also doesn't discuss Ravenna, which I find to be a serious omission. On the other hand... having been to Ravenna twice in the past 3 years (and slept there for 2-3 nights each time), I am delighted that the masses that would likely follow such inclusion have thus far generally bypassed this incredible town with its UNESCO mosaic sights. There are PLENTY of tourists in Ravenna already, but not as many US tourists as might start coming there if Ravenna ever gets included in The Book. (Ravenna does have a short chapter in the RS Venice guidebook as day trip, but is NOT in the main Italy book.)

The statistics published above count “daily visitors’ presences” during the year in the municipality, which I believe means hotel nights x guests per room. That means that if I stay in Rimini 30 days, the count shows 30 even if it’s just one person. That is the only way that places like Cavallino or Jesolo can be on the top 10 and have so many millions. Since those beach localities are places where entire families of Italians and Europeans may stay one month at the time, that is how the count is so high, whereas cities where there might be many more visitors, but generally only for a few nights, get a lower count. The statistics refer to the municipality, not the province, therefore Ravenna would not include beach municipalities in the Ravenna province.

We loved our time in Torino. If you happen to be there in early September, check to see if the MITO Milano/Torino Music Festival will be in Torino while you're there. We had so much fun singing Italian songs (they pass out music books) in a crowded piazza for the finale.

The Egyptian Museum is amazing and I also enjoyed the Shroud Museum. One day to visit those two things was enough for me (day trip from Milan).

Other guidebooks such as Lonely Planet, Rough Guide and Michelin cover cities not covered by Rick's guidebooks. I find them very helpful when visiting such places. You might want to pick up a copy. When possibile, I stop by a book store and compare the sections on the places I plan to visit before deciding which one to buy.

We spend 5 days in Turin in April and found the city fascinating. We had a lovely BB in a perfect location, great breakfast for only 90E a night. We bought the reasonable museum pass and saw all the sights. The history, architecture, food, palaces were amazing. From the we rented a car and went to Barolo for four days.

Turin is only interesting if you enjoy Baroque churches and palaces, an old Roman Quadrilateral quarter, fancy schmancy cafes, world-class food and wine, the second-best Egyptian museum in the world, Italian football, arcaded streets, the Savoy palaces, the special reverence for local culinary delicacies and easy access to the wine country of Barolo and Barbaresco in one direction or the Italian alps in the other. The history of Italy unifying as a republic, the home of some of Italy’s greatest authors, and the sad history of one of the Holocaust’s most articulate and poignant witnesses.

Other than that, there’s not much. 😉

Love that, Kim! It sounds like my sort of place. But thank heavens most Americans don't know about it or are uninterested in it, because I haven't managed to get there yet.

We were in Torino three nights last year for Christmas and lived it. The auto museum was fabulous (and we are not car people. Also enjoyed the cinema museum but wished I rented the audio guide.

Food was great as well as the amazing Christmas lights

Excellent point Karen, I forgot about the fabulous illuminations at Christmastime! They really are out of this world.