Palazzo Madama

In the 2000 years Torino has been around, there have been a great number of changes and additions to the city. Having been here over a month, it has been interesting to get to peal back each layer of the cities history and see things from ancient roman artifacts to new shifts as a result of the 2006 Winter Olympics. One building, however, has been here the entire time and is completely symbolic of all the changes in Torino over the last 2000 years.

The Royal Church of San Lorenzo

Churches are everywhere in Italy. It is kind of like a bank in Minden or a gas station in the states or a Starbucks in California. On our first visit in my Art class, we went to the Palazzo Madama (which I will post about tomorrow) but took a detour to... you guessed it! A chruch!

Caffè Al Bicerin

When someone told me that the Drink of Torino wasn't coffee (and I don't mean a starbucks coffee but just a cafè, I have to say I was a little surprised. Italy is a country known for coffee, being coffee drinkers and essentially loving everything coffee so to hear that the drink of the former capital wasn't coffee, I think i was justifiably taken aback.

As I think I have noted before, Torino has a ton of old buildings. One of the old Roman gates is still standing (though I have yet to get a good picture of it- the weather hasn't been all that great this week) and part of the town is still on the same grid system set up by the Romans eons ago. That is where my latest journey took me (though it took a bit longer to get it on here than I would have liked, the inclement weather has made getting on the Internet far more of a challenge than I would have hoped for) for the Drink of Torino.

Aosta

This weekend was a weekend filled with tons of adventures and things to do so i will start with one of my favorites- our trip to Aosta.
     
Aosta isn't typically on the American tourist place. It was taken over by the Romans in 25 BC (and people had been living there much earlier) and remained a Roman stronghold until the fall of the Western Roman Empire. As with most of Italy, following the fall of Rome, the city changed hands frequently, going to the Burgundians, then the Ostrogoths, then the Byzantines, followed by the Lombards, the franks, Charlemagne, Burgundy and then finally the savoy family though it remained separate from Italy until 1948 (The Savoy family had granted Aosta special status when they acquired it). When the Romans took over the town, they laid out their usual grid pattern which is still very visible today. Today it's home to a little over 35,000 people and was in the running to host several of the last winter games. The city had hoped to get an event during the 2006 games but didnt as Torino kept all the winter events in Piedmont. 

Food!

I was looking at some of my posts through the first three weeks of being over here and I noticed that for someone who is in Italy, there isnt much mention of food. Considering how amazing everything has been, I was fairly surprised. This past weekend, My roommate and I were walking around Torino, headed back from a successful journey to the mall when we crossed paths with a ristorante hidden away from the hustle and bustle of Torino. We decided that it looked like a great place to get a good, authentic italian experience so we headed in...