Turin by night

Turin is an Italian town of about 850,000 inhabitants, the fourth largest town in Italy by population and the capital of the metropolitan city of the same name and of the Piedmont region.

Heart of a metropolitan area with 2 million inhabitants on an approximate surface of about 2 300 km², Turin is the third economic-productive complex in the country and one of the major university, artistic, tourist, scientific and cultural centers in Italy. In its territory there are also areas and buildings included in two assets protected by UNESCO: some buildings and areas that are part of the Savoyard residences circuit in Piedmont (world heritage) and the area of the Po hills (biosphere reserve).

A city with a two-thousand-year history, it was probably founded near its present location, around the third century BC, by the Taurini, then transformed into a Roman colony by Augustus with the name of Iulia Augusta Taurinorum in the first century BC. After the Ostrogothic dominion, it was the capital of an important Lombard duchy, and then passed, after becoming the capital of the Carolingian brand, under the nominal lordship of the Savoy in the eleventh century. City of the homonymous duchy, in 1563 it became its capital. From 1720 it was the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia (even if only de facto until the perfect merger of 1847, when it also became one formally), a state that in the nineteenth century would lead to Italian unification and that made Turin the first capital of the Kingdom of 'Italy (from 1861 to 1865).

Site in 2006 of the XX Winter Olympic Games, birthplace of some of the major symbols of Made in Italy in the world, such as Vermouth, gianduja chocolate and espresso coffee, it is the hub of the Italian automotive industry, as well as an important center of publishing, banking and insurance, information technology, cinema, food and wine, aerospace, industrial design, sport and fashion. It is home to very important museums, including the Egyptian Museum, the second largest in the world.

One of the peculiar characteristics of the city, which make it unique in the world, is the presence of mountain ranges that surround it for a radius of over 100 kilometers, the Alps. Some of these peaks are among the highest in Europe and Turin is the city with the largest number of high mountains around it in the entire European continent.

To make the view of these beautiful mountains adequate, I wanted to create a series of VASTphoto. I chosed the highest and most panoramic point of the city, from the 700 meters of altitude of the Superga hill where the huge basilica of the same name resides. From the top of this hill the view is unique and spectacular, as you can see from the photo. It is possible to see the entire city and all the villages surrounding it with a single glance over a radius of over 100 kilometers in width and about 50 in depth. All the main buildings and the great straight avenues of the city are clearly visible, from the spire construction of the Mole Antonelliana, its symbol, to the new and modern skyscrapers, up to all the historic buildings of the Savoy.

In this VAST photo you can see the city lights of last autumn period in December 2021, with the fog and the city pollution creating a fascinating atmospehere contrasting the visibility and clearance of the Alps mountain range surrounding the city. You can also see some mountain huts lights in mountain valleys, as indicated on some previews of the photo.