Piedmont

Celtic and Ligurian tribes, among them the Taurini who gave Turin its name, held the area before Rome founded Augusta Taurinorum as a military colony in the 1st century BC. After the empire fell the region passed to the Lombards and the Franks, and in the Middle Ages it was divided among communes such as Asti, the marquisates of Saluzzo and Monferrato, and the House of Savoy, an Alpine dynasty from across the mountains.

The Savoys gradually absorbed the rest. In 1563 Duke Emmanuel Philibert moved his capital from Chambéry to Turin, and the city was rebuilt with straight Baroque streets, squares and a ring of royal residences. Its survival of the French siege of 1706 is commemorated by the basilica of Superga, and in 1720 the dukes, kings of Sicily since 1713, exchanged that island for Sardinia.

In the 19th century the Kingdom of Sardinia, run from Turin by ministers such as Cavour, led the unification of Italy, and Turin was the first capital of the new kingdom from 1861 to 1865. Industry followed: Fiat was founded in Turin in 1899, Olivetti built typewriters and computers at Ivrea, and after 1945 hundreds of thousands of migrants from the south came to work in the car plants. The Langhe hills were a stronghold of the partisan resistance in the Second World War, and Turin hosted the Winter Olympics in 2006.

Piedmontese are thought of in Italy as reserved, precise and a little French in manner, a reflection of centuries of rule from both sides of the Alps. The Piedmontese language, piemontèis, is still spoken by older people and in the countryside, and the mountain valleys hold smaller minorities: Occitan in the south-west, Franco-Provençal in the valleys north of Turin and Walser German around Monte Rosa. The Waldensians, a Protestant church older than the Reformation, have their historic centre in the Pellice valley.

Turin is a city of cafés, bookshops and museums, home to the Salone del Libro book fair and to Juventus and Torino, whose football rivalry divides the city. The Slow Food movement, founded in 1986 by Carlo Petrini of Bra, is based there, and its food fair, Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, is held in Turin. Festivals range from the Palio di Asti, a bareback horse race in the town's main square each September, to the Battle of the Oranges at Ivrea's carnival, when teams on foot pelt the crews of carts with oranges.

Wine is treated with near-religious seriousness in the Langhe, where family estates guard their named vineyard plots, and the truffle hunter, the trifolau, still goes out at night with his dog.

About 4.2 million people live in Piedmont. Turin has around 850,000 residents and more than two million in its metropolitan area; Novara, Alessandria, Asti and Cuneo are the other main towns, and Alba is the capital of the wine hills. The population is older than the Italian average.

Turin remains an industrial city, though car production has shrunk sharply since the 1980s and the old Lingotto plant is now a shopping, exhibition and hotel complex. Aerospace, design, universities and tourism have partly filled the gap. Alba is home to Ferrero, maker of Nutella, and the countryside lives on wine, hazelnuts and cattle, while the plains around Vercelli and Novara are Italy's leading rice-growing area, flooded each spring.

Turin's day runs on coffee at historic cafés, a working lunch and an evening aperitivo, a ritual the city claims to have invented with vermouth. Current debates include the future of car manufacturing, the long-running dispute over the Turin–Lyon high-speed rail tunnel in the Susa valley, and depopulation of the Alpine villages.

Piedmontese cooking is among the richest in Italy, built on butter, eggs, beef and the produce of the hills. Antipasti come first and in numbers: vitello tonnato, cold veal in tuna-caper sauce; carne cruda, raw chopped beef; and bagna càuda, a warm dip of garlic, anchovies and oil for raw vegetables. Pasta means tajarin, fine egg noodles, and agnolotti del plin, small pinched meat-filled parcels. Mains include brasato al Barolo, beef braised in the region's great wine, and bollito misto, mixed boiled meats with green sauce. The rice plains give risotto and panissa, a Vercelli rice dish with beans and salami. In autumn, white truffles from Alba are shaved over tajarin or eggs.

Cheeses include Castelmagno, Bra, Raschera, Toma and Robiola di Roccaverano, and Gorgonzola is made around Novara. Sweets rely on hazelnuts and chocolate: gianduja, the hazelnut chocolate of Turin, gianduiotti, torrone nougat, amaretti and bonet, a cocoa custard pudding. Turin's bicerin is a layered drink of coffee, chocolate and milk, and vermouth was first made commercially there in the 18th century.

The wines are Barolo and Barbaresco from the Nebbiolo grape, everyday Barbera and Dolcetto, sweet sparkling Moscato d'Asti, white Arneis from the Roero and Gavi from the south-east.

Turin is the obvious start: the arcaded Via Po and Piazza San Carlo, the Egyptian Museum, one of the most important collections of its kind outside Cairo, the Royal Palace and the cathedral that keeps the Shroud of Turin, and the Mole Antonelliana, whose tower holds the National Cinema Museum. The Savoy residences, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, include the Reggia di Venaria and the hunting lodge of Stupinigi, and the basilica of Superga looks down on the city from its hill. West of Turin, the Sacra di San Michele abbey stands on a rock above the Susa valley.

To the south-east, the Langhe, Roero and Monferrato vineyard landscapes are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Barolo, La Morra, Serralunga d'Alba, Grinzane Cavour and Barbaresco sit on hilltops among the vines, and Alba, with its medieval towers, holds the International White Truffle Fair each autumn. Asti and the Monferrato are close by.

In the north, Lake Orta has the town of Orta San Giulio, the island of San Giulio with its Romanesque basilica, and the chapels of the Sacro Monte above. On Lake Maggiore's western shore, Stresa faces the Borromean Islands — the Baroque palace and terraced gardens of Isola Bella and the botanical garden of Isola Madre — and Verbania has the gardens of Villa Taranto. Beyond rise the Alps: Monte Rosa above Macugnaga, and the ski slopes of Sestriere.