The beautiful but underrated ancient city known for its Hollywood links

A stunning ancient city beloved by a world-famous Hollywood star is shockingly under-visited compared to some of its peers.

Turin, located in Piedmont, Northern Italy, was established as a Roman community as early as 28BC and was briefly the national capital before the country unified in the 19th century.

While it has since become a regional capital, the city remains one of Italy’s most unique, alongside Venice, Milan, Rome, Genova and many more.

The antique metropolis is teeming with tourist activities, including a museum of cinema dubbed “Hollywood in Torino” and the largest collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts outside of Africa.

But it is criminally underrated, with foot traffic in Turin nearly a quarter of that experienced by other cities.

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Figures compiled by the Città di Torino in 2019, before the city was impacted by Covid, showed approximately 4,688,970 people visited Turin that year.

Most visitors, unlike others, also primarily came from within Italy, roughly 72 percent, officials estimated.

The remaining 28 percent came from other nations, and most of those visiting only spent an average of 2.4 days exploring the city.

The figures pale in comparison to Italy’s most visited cities, including Rome and Venice, where the number of annual visitors sit at 25 million and 20 million respectively.

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Turin is deserving of numbers like these, many tourists believe, given it has both a significant Italian cultural and even global religious significance.

The city is home to Fiat, one of Italy’s most famous cars, making it a pillar of the country’s automotive industry and a vital link in its economic chain.

Turin also provides an opportunity for religious pilgrimage, as it serves as the resting place for the venerated Turin shroud.

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The shroud, which is believed to have once swaddled Jesus Christ as he lay dead following his crucifixion, bares the face of what appears to be a crucified man.

The cloth sheet is, understandably, a religious icon and is held inside Turin’s Cappella della Sacra Sindone.

Those hoping to catch a glimpse of the shroud – which scientists have dated to the 13th or 14th century – all have to wait for one of the rare opportunities in which it is produced from its container, which people can view via a glass window in the chapel’s rear.

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