Places to see in Turin

The oldest Egyptian museum in the world and second only to Cairo for what it holds — an entire rock-cut tomb, the Drovetti collection, room after room of it. The single best reason to come to Turin and easily half a day. Consistently the thing visitors expect least and remember most.

The wooded hill east of the river, with the basilica on top and the whole Alpine arc behind the city on a clear day. A rack tramway climbs it. Best in winter and early spring, when the mountains are white and the haze that hides them in summer has gone.

The spire on every Turin postcard, built as a synagogue, finished as nothing in particular, and now holding the national cinema museum. A glass lift runs up the middle of the hall to a viewing deck with the Alps across the rooftops. The museum spirals around and below it and is far better than a building-with-a-lift deserves.

The Savoy royal palace at the head of the old centre, opening into a complex that also takes in the armoury and the gallery. Grand state rooms and a garden, rarely crowded. Two hours, and it sits three minutes from the Egyptian Museum, which makes a natural morning of the two.

The largest open-air market in Europe, running most mornings across several squares — produce outdoors, fish and meat in the halls, and a genuinely mixed city doing its shopping. Saturday is the big day.

A French-looking Savoy residence on the Po, inside the riverside park that Turin actually uses — runners, rowers and families rather than visitors. The castle is a university faculty and mostly seen from outside; the park and the river walk are the reason to come. An easy hour on foot from the centre.

A tiny café facing the Consolata church, open since 1763 and still serving the drink it invented — espresso, drinking chocolate and cream in a glass, layered and not stirred. Eight marble tables and usually a wait.

Mirrors, brass and carved wood from 1875, on the corner of the Galleria Subalpina. A confectioner first and a café second — the gianduiotti are the reason to go in.

A small baroque square behind the palace, framed by the brick curve of Palazzo Carignano where the first Italian parliament sat. The arcaded streets around it are the point of Turin — kilometres of covered pavement, and the historic cafés that invented the city's chocolate habit are on them.

A single small room off Piazza Castello, panelled in leather and marble since 1907, where the tramezzino was invented. Standing room mostly, and a good stop between the palace and the Egyptian Museum.