Italy: Step Right Up to the Center

JUNE 1996. TURIN, ITALY: After a seventeen-year absence, no surprise that I had forgotten how lovely much of this city is: deep porticos running up and down the boulevards, giving shade to posh cafés and shops; baroque palazzi whose carved decoration stands somewhere between French and Italian in style; and just across the tree-lined banks of the Po river, steep green hills dotted with villas and, higher, cherry orchards and meadows.

Turin puts forward a stately facade, appropriate to its place in modern Italian history as seat of the House of Savoy, birthplace of the Risorgimento, and first capital of a united Italy. Since the turn of the century, it has also represented industrial society—home to Fiat and “...