Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 7: Rivoli - Avigliana

A walk in nature walks the soul back home.

– Mary Davis

Today's stage couldn't have been more unlike yesterday's! After an urban stage, walking mostly on concrete through city suburbs, we spent the entire day in the woods, in a silence broken only by the sounds of woodpeckers tapping on hollow tree trunks, squirrels rustling among fallen leaves, and the occasional chestnut dropping from a tree to the ground.

We thanked Laura, our hostess in Turin, said goodbye and crossed the city by bus to return to the spot where we had left off walking the evening before in Rivoli. We wandered around the pretty little town of Rivoli for a bit, in search of a bank machine, a sandwich, and a stamp for our pilgrim credentials, which we found at the town museum and tourist information office. It was closed and locked, but we tried ringing the bell and two very friendly and helpful young ladies magically appeared. They said no-one had ever asked them for a stamp for a pilgrim passport before, but they were happy to provide one, offer advice about the route and allow us to use the restroom (necessary after an hour and a half on a bus!). Then we climbed to the top of the town and the castle, which now houses a museum of contemporary art.

From here we abandoned the main route of the Via Francigena down in the valley to walk the Via dei Pellegrini route through the morenic hills formed by debris left behind by retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age. This route follows dirt roads and footpaths through forests of hazel and chestnut trees at an elevation of around 500 metres. It took us past a picnic area with a drinking fountain, and then a big bench - the first I have found right on thr path of a long-distance  walking route, without requiring a detour!

Me pretending not to be worried that big rock might roll down and crush me

There is something regenerating about walking in the forest, so that you arrive at your destination with more energy than you had when you started out. We were nonetheless happy to reach the home of our hosts for the evening, Giancarlo and Betta. I met Giancarlo in Vercelli, it so happens, when I took over from him as volunteer on duty in the pilgrim hostel there in the summer of 2023. Giancarlo is a long-distance cyclist, and came back to the hostel later that same week, cycling a portion of the Via Francigena with friends. When he found out that Mariella and I were going to be walking by his home, he invited us to stay. And tomorrow he and Betta will walk up to the Sacra di San Michele with us! We can already see it from their kitchen window.

In the meantime, we spent a cheerful evening over drinks and dinner, joined by Nello, another volunteer hospitalier who belongs to the same association and lives between Turin and Avigliana, on the section of the route that we walked yesterday. Betta made us a delicious bean soup, a vegetable pie and a salad, and there were cheeses, paté and baguette - reminding us how close to France we are getting!

With fellow hospitaliers Giancarlo and Nello

Rivoli - Avigliana 14.5 km

Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 6: Torino - Rivoli

Oggi molti considererebbero camminare per ore un atto eroico, insolito.
E invece… camminare è la cosa più naturale del mondo.
È usare le gambe, guardare con gli occhi non per vedere, ma per osservare.
Perché tutti vediamo, ma pochi osservano davvero.

(Many people now view walking for hours on end as something unusual and heroic. But actually, walking is the most natural thing in the world. It's a matter of using your legs and looking with your eyes, not to see, but to observe. Because we all look, but few truly observe.)  

- Edoardo, pilgrim on foot from Salerno to Santiago, 2026 (nowayedo.it)

Many people now would definitely view walking for hours on end through the streets of a big city like Turin as something unusual.... and possibly silly, rather than heroic! Asphalt, traffic, roadworks, polluted air... But the pilgrim walks the whole way, without feeling a need to get on a bus or metro train to skip the big city and its sprawling outskirts. 

We attempted to optimise this urban stage by taking an alternative route that follows the river Dora and passes through several city parks rather than taking the shortest possible route straight along Corso Francia, a 12 kilometre long avenue connecting central Turin with Rivoli.

We set off at our usual starting time, eight o'clock, but without our backpacks and in city clothes and shoes, planning to return to our friend Laura's apartment by bus at the end of the day. 

Following the Dora river, we soon came to the place where I would have been staying if it weren't for Laura's invitation: Sermig - Arsenale della Pace.  Built in 1580 as a gunpowder factory, the building burnt down in 1852 and was then converted into the Arsenal of the Artillery of Turin, Italy's first weapons factory, at the behest of king Victor Emmanuel II. The new complex covered an area of 45,000 square metres and employed up to 5000 workers. Many of the weapons used first by the Savoy army and then Italy during the battles of the unification and both World Wars were produced there. After being abandoned at the end of the Second World War, the Arsenal was given to the young people of the association Sermig, who transformed it into a place of peace. A thousand people of all ages came from all over Italy and even from abroad to volunteer in the renovation work, creating the Arsenal of Peace: a house that is always open, ready to help anyone in need of  medical assistance, a roof or a job, and the heart of a network of solidarity that has spread all around the world. The complex includes a guesthouse open to visitors to the city of Turin - including but not limited to passing pilgrims!

The complex is so large we had to cross the river to get past it - it takes up all the space on the river bank. We continued past former industrial estates, now dismantled, and through a vast park - Turin is a very green city - before emerging onto a cycling track beside a major road that took us all the way out of Turin and into Collegno. 

Collegno originated as the Roman mansio of Quintum Collegium (hence the modern name), but is now home to an ultra-modern aerospace industry involved in space exploration - which evidently sponsored the decorations in the roundabouts! 

Collegno is best known for its Certosa (Charterhouse), founded in 1641 by Maria Cristina of France and run by the Carthusians until Napoleon came along and shut it down in 1802. Reopened in 1816 by the Savoy family, the complex housed an asylum from 1853 until Italy's insane asylums were all closed by law in the 1970s. We stopped for a picnic in the park that surrounds the complex, but did not stray from our path to see it as we were not sure we would be able to get in, as the Certosa now houses the town's municipal offices and administrative offices for medical services, and these would all have been closed on a Sunday. Our energy levels were beginning to flag, so we cut across to Corso Francia to walk the more direct but less scenic route the rest of the way to our destination. 

Most of this route was characterised by modern highrises alternating with decrepit old buildings, with businesses strung out along the street here and there, almost all shut for Sunday, and roadworks construction sites at regular intervals where the stations of a new metro line are being built. But we did come across one more interesting historic site, Villaggio Leumann. 

The Leumann Workers' Village was built between the late 19th and early 20th centuries to provide housing for workers in the cotton mill founded in 1875 by Swiss entrepreneurs Isaac Leumann and his son Napoleone. The complex — comprising private homes, social services, recreational facilities, and the textile plant itself — covers a total area of ​​approximately 60,000 square metres. An expression of 19th-century entrepreneurial philanthropy, Villaggio Leumann was built to attract a dependable workforce at a time when the availability of labour was often unstable due to the workers' traditional engagement in agriculture. One of the designers of the village was Pietro Fenoglio (1865–1927), a leading figure in the Liberty style in Turin.

Tours of the village are given regularly, and one was due to begin in an hour - but we had an appointment to keep, so after a short break we continued on to the next bus stop and spent an hour travelling back to central Turin by bus. Here we met my son Davide, who had just got off a plane and was about to get onto a train but had one hour of free time to spend with his Mum in between!

Torino - Rivoli 18.5 km

Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 5: Gassino Torinese - Torino

Turin is a very fine city. In the matter of roominess it transcends anything that was ever dreamed of before, I fancy. It sits in the midst of a vast dead-level, and one is obliged to imagine that land may be had for the asking, and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it. The streets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares are prodigious, the houses are huge and handsome, and compacted into uniform blocks that stretch away as straight as an arrow, into the distance.

- Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, 1878

Mark Twain was right: those extravagantly wide streets sure do stretch away into the distance... a very long distance, when you've walked 17 kilometres and can't wait to get to your destination! And the numbering scheme for the addresses never skips numbers, as in other cities; it puts in extra ones instead! So that if you are looking, say, for building number 86, you walk past number 80, and then number 80A, and then number 80-bis, and then numbers 80-bis-A, -B, -C and -D before you finally get to number 82 and make any progress. Not to mention that every time you need to cross a street, it takes five minutes for the traffic light to change, then five minutes to cross only as far as the traffic island in the middle - by which time the lights will have changed again 😂

We were very happy to get to the house number we were looking for on one of those extravagantly wide tree-lined avenues, just behind the gardens of the Palazzo Reale. Here Mariella's friend Laura welcomed us to her cosy flat and put our hiking clothes through the washing machine while we showered. Then she took us on a whirlwind tour of central Turin before dinner, including Porta Palazzo market, the cathedral for a stamp on our pilgrim credentials, the ancient Roman city gates with a stretch of Roman Road (the Via Domitia?), the royal palace, elegant shopping streets, vermouth in an old-fashioned bar, the university district where Mariella studied, the Mole Antonelliana tower, and even a street festival on the way back home!

The cathedral, where the shroud of Turin is kept

The Roman Porta Palatina

Remains of the Decumanus

Turin was first inhabited by the Taurini, a Celto-Ligurian people, and became a Roman colony after 28 BC, under the name of Julia Augusta Taurinorum, with a population of about 5000. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire the city was conquered by the Ostrogoths and then the Lombards. In the Middle Ages the area became the property of the Counts of Savoy, growing to about 20,000 people by the fifteenth century, when the city was redesigned and many of its gardens and palaces were built; the university also dates back to this time.

Emmanuel Philibert made Turin the capital of the Duchy of Savoy in 1563. Piazza San Carlo and Via Nuova, now Via Roma, were added  in the first half of the 17th century, the walls were enlarged, and the Royal Palace was built. From 1861 to 1865, Turin was the first capital of the Kingdom of Italy.

Palazzo Reale

Palazzo Carignano

Mole Antonelliana 

Street market and festival in Via Santa Giulia

Punto Mes vermouth 

We returned to Laura's apartment for a delicious dinner, then unfolded her sofabed and retired early, exhausted after a busy day walking 17 kilometres into Turin and then another six kilometres exploring the city! 

Gassino Torinese - Torino 17 km (+6!)