Barcelona built itself a new coastline, Athens made its transport system almost tolerable. Lord only knows what will become of the East End of London by 2012.
The Torinese will claim that their city was pretty smart already and merely needed a little accessorising to welcome the athletes, skaters and snowboarders for this month’s Winter Olympics.
They have a point. Temperamentally and geographically, Turin is closer to the affluent gentility of the Swiss cantons than the Latin clamour of Rome or Naples. Only that telltale narcissism and an almost ridiculous obsession with fine food betrays the Torinese as Italians.
It is a supremely ordered city, spreading out in elegant grids and piazzas either side of Via Roma, the upmarket avenue that leads from the railway station to the remains of the Roman theatre. This is the place to batter the credit card. Even boutiques saddled with names such as Scotland or Covent Garden seem to deal in exclusive couture, while Posh does exactly what it says on the tin: purvey Gaultier and Galliano to the Victoria Beckhams and Nancy Dell’Olios of the world and those who take those ladies as their role models.
Those of loftier aspirations will prefer the shaded arcades of Via Po, lined with second-hand bookstores and discreetly expensive coffee shops. It’s a beautiful curving avenue, exuding essence of old Europe with the aroma of freshly ground beans and dusty philosophical treatises. Before the era of designer labels, that cheery soul Friedrich Nietzsche settled here and called Turin a “worthy and serious city” with “solemn and earnest piazzas”.
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Via Po’s seductive porticos lead back to Piazza Castello, a useful orientation point in old Turin. The square is presently dominated by the steel and glass constructions erected for the Olympic medal ceremonies, but remains the hub of Turin’s history and identity. It was the first stronghold of the Savoy dynasty who established the Palazzo Madama, which subsequent rulers tried to tart up, with varying success, in an attempt to make Turin resemble a great European capital.
It didn’t really manage that until the 19th century. It was briefly the capital of Italy, but gained its economic virility through industrialisation and especially the flourishing of Fiat.
The Agnelli automobile empire gained a certain cultural cachet when it featured in the crime caper The Italian Job. Gianni Agnelli flooded Turin with his Fiats during the filming to ensure plenty of free advertising. Fans of Michael Caine might like to make the pilgrimage down to the former plant at Lingotto (now the site of the Olympic media centre) and visit the rooftop test track with its great views over the city.
From there, you can’t miss the outlandish lines of Turin’s only architectural folly, the Mole Antonelliana, an edifice that seems to have been the single conduit for Turin’s quota of playfulness. This is a couple of Greek temples sandwiching half a pyramid, topped off with what looks like a leftover from the Eiffel Tower.
To be fair, it’s rather more sophisticated than that suggests. You can take a glass lift up through the tower to a viewing platform 540ft up, and gaze down over the piazzas or north to the daunting peaks of the Alps. At least you can unless, like me, you pick a day when the snow clouds have descended and a blizzard reduces visibility to about 5in in front of your nose.
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The Mole Antonelliana houses a suitably camp and elaborate cinema museum, a painstaking chronicle of the film industry’s origins in shadow puppets, magic lanterns and flick animation. The attendants encourage you to try all the antique devices. It’s strangely reassuring to see that even with Thomas Edison’s magic lantern shows they needed girls in skimpy outfits to pull in the punters.
Beyond Turin’s formality lies a city that is famously mystical, the sort of place that could provide material for half a dozen Dan Brown novels. From medieval times, it has been a centre of alchemy, magic and the dark arts, although couched in a rather more sophisticated (and profitable) language than the raw superstitions of the south.
Spiritual artefacts of dubious provenance don’t come more controversial than the Shroud of Turin, hidden away beyond the vulgar gaze of sceptics. Brought to the city in 1578, its authenticity has been questioned constantly over the past couple of centuries.
Carbon dating suggested it was only 700 years old, but pollen analysts argued it had been around for the requisite two millenniums. Four years ago it was secretly restored, much to the consternation of all the conspiracy theorists.
You can visit the cathedral and the Cappella della Sacra Sindone where the shroud is kept, but it won’t be on public display again until 2025, by which time modern science may have devised tests that will allow the fabric to reveal the names of all its wearers and the loom where it was woven.
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It probably offends government guidelines on religious respect to mention, in close proximity to the most holy relic of the Catholic church, the assorted spooky and occult beliefs attached to the city. Locals will tell you that the palace gate is the source for benign magic in the city.
Nostradamus, he of the eternally versatile predictions, used to rent a place on the Via Michele Lessona. His 20th-century equivalent was a mysticist called Gustavo Rol, who provided readings for Benito Mussolini, John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
The suspicion is that the Torinese are so keen to play up the mystical aspects because they are only too aware that their city would otherwise seem like a temple of callow consumerism, albeit with a designer label.
It isn’t necessarily typical of its region. Piedmont, caught between French and Italian influences, shouldn’t be judged by its capital’s taste for fripperies. Nor by Sestriere, although Olympic enthusiasts will want to visit the site of the downhill ski competitions, a couple of hours from Turin.
More than 6,500ft up, this resort was originally an Agnelli playground, opened in 1937, and still has all the charmless ostentation of that era in Italian history. Skiers will purr about the challenge of the slopes, but even an Olympic burnishing hasn’t made the place seductive.
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A far better flavour of Alpine Piedmont can be gleaned from a picturesque two-hour train ride from Turin taking you up into the old mountain town of Aosta. For “old” read ancient, the Romans having founded the place in 23BC. It has changed since, although there are plentiful Roman remains, including an arch of Augustus looming in the midst of a traffic island on the main road east.
The Roman theatre is undergoing seemingly perpetual restoration, but Aosta offers relatively recent attractions, notably the Collegiata dei Santi Pietro e Orso, a church knocked up in the 10th century, using Roman foundations, but later touched up with gothic and romanesque flourishes.
If its historical edifices are impressive, Aosta’s real attraction is the chance to wander the narrow streets of its old town, eat robust Piedmontese cuisine in a charming trattoria and revel in the relief of being in a northern Italian town where the locals aren’t mentally sizing up the cost of your attire.
Saint Orso, an obscure Irish member of the pantheon who raged against heretics like a sixth-century Ian Paisley, is Aosta’s excuse to throw a huge party at the end of January, a festa revolving around an enormous craft fair and the requisite folk-dancing and wine-tasting.
Sipping a sprightly white wine amid snow drifts and assorted hippies selling impractical footwear, with a medieval tower looming in front of an Alpine mountainscape, is a peculiarly Piedmontese experience, and a million miles from the chic urban priorities of Turin.
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“Olympics? Really, when?” an Aosta local asks with mild curiosity and reaches for a fresh bottle.
Details: Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies direct from Prestwick to Bergamo from £65 return including taxes. It is a three-hour train ride from Bergamo to Turin (www.trenitalia.com). There are daily Ryanair flights to Turin from London Stansted from £43 return including taxes. Easyjet (www.easyjet.com) flies to Turin daily from London Luton from £35 return including taxes. In Turin, Hotel Liberty (00 39 011 562 8801; www.iperhotel.com) is a stylish boutique hotel in the old town with doubles from £55, with occasional offers.
Centro di Accoglienza Pellegrini Basilica di Superga (00 39 011 898 0083; basilica_superga@virgilio.it) is a converted pilgrims’ house with lots of character. Smallish doubles cost from £46. In Aosta, Hotel Europe (00 39 016 523 6363) in the town centre has doubles from £70.