Cit Turin, Turin — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Cit Turin?

Giuseppe Gallo built the church on piazza Benefica. The Chiesa di Gesù Nazareno went up between 1904 and 1913 in pure neo-Gothic, its facade richly worked, and it faces the market square along via Duchessa Jolanda. A second church marks corso Francia.

The Santuario Nostra Signora di Lourdes was raised between 1890 and 1910 for the fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions and is still held by the Marist Fathers. One building kept a working lighthouse. The Palazzo del Faro on the west side of piazza Benefica, known to Turin as the Palazzo delle Aquile, carries a turret with a glass dome where the light once stood.

Towers came later. The Palazzo della Provincia by Ottorino Aloisio was designed in 1962 and finished in 1966 at sixty-five metres, and the Intesa Sanpaolo skyscraper of 2013 rises far above it.

What is the history of Cit Turin?

Cit Turin grew at the end of the nineteenth century on much older ground. Remains of a pre-Roman necropolis have been found inside its boundaries, so the settlement long predates the elegant quarter that stands there. The name is disputed.

The most convincing account makes this the very first borgo outside the medieval walls, an independent administrative unit right against the city, which is why it was called little Turin. Piedmontese made the name masculine. Another theory ties it to the late eighteenth-century plan that meant the borgo to be wholly self-sufficient, and a third to its size, though that one fails because Turin once held far smaller borghi and contrade.

Luigi Martini founded a charity here in 1889. The judge, politician and philanthropist ran Casa Benefica for orphans on the southern side of the gardens beside the Chiesa di Gesù Nazareno, and it worked until bombing destroyed it in the Second World War. The gardens still carry his name.

Where is Cit Turin?

Cit Turin is a triangle west of the Turin centre in Circoscrizione 3, bounded by corso Inghilterra, corso Francia between piazza Rivoli and piazza Statuto, and corso Vittorio Emanuele II, with Cenisia adjoining to the west.