Private Turin Underground Tunnels and Air Raid Shelters Guided Tour

Pietro Micca Museum and the siege of Turin

The tour starts in front of the Pietro Micca Museum, close to the old Citadel of Turin. The museum tells the story of the siege of 1706, when a French and Spanish army surrounded the city for almost four months during the War of the Spanish Succession. To defend the Citadel, the engineers of the Duchy of Savoy had dug a vast network of countermine galleries deep under the ground, and the soldier-miner after whom the museum is named gave his life in one of them to stop the enemy breaking through.

It is the ideal place to begin a Turin underground tour, because it explains why this city has so much hidden below its elegant streets. Your guide introduces the idea of the City Downstairs, the underground world that, again and again in history, protected and sheltered the people living above.

The 18th-century underground tunnels

From the streets you go down about 15 metres, roughly the height of a five-storey building, into tunnels dug in the eighteenth century. The brick vaults, the cool and steady air and the silence give a very different picture of Turin from the one you see in its Baroque squares. Your guide explains how these passages were built, what they were used for and how they connected with the life of the city above.

The underground sites are opened exclusively for the tour, so you see them calmly with your own group. Photos are allowed without flash in certain areas, but videos are not permitted inside the tunnels, and bulky equipment such as tripods should be left at your hotel. Many travellers say this is the most unusual of all things to do in Turin.

The World War II air raid shelter

As a great industrial centre of northern Italy, Turin was one of the Italian cities hit hardest by air raids during the Second World War. When the sirens sounded, families hurried down into public shelters dug beneath the city, where they waited for hours, sometimes whole nights, until the danger had passed.

On this tour you step inside one of these air raid shelters and hear how ordinary people lived through the bombing years: the long corridors, the simple benches, the rules of the shelter and the fear and solidarity of those nights. It is a moving visit that brings the history of the war close and personal, and your guide adapts the stories to your group, including children.

Turin Cathedral and the Holy Shroud

Back in the light, the walk continues to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, built at the end of the fifteenth century and the only Renaissance church in Turin, with its white marble façade and tall brick bell tower. Behind the high altar is the domed chapel built to keep the Holy Shroud, the linen cloth that has made Turin famous all over the world.

Your guide reveals a detail on the cathedral façade that most visitors pass without noticing and explains the history of the Shroud in the city. If you wonder whether Turin Cathedral is worth visiting, this stop gives you the story you need to come back later and see the interior at your own pace.

Squares, guardians and legends of central Turin

Between the underground stops you walk through the historic centre, a city of straight Roman streets, long porticoes and grand squares created when Turin was the capital of the House of Savoy. Your guide points out the statues and symbols that, according to local tradition, stand guard over the city, and tells the old legends that surround them.

Because the tour is private, the pace and the stories follow your interests: more military history, more wartime life or more legends. It is a good way to discover Turin in one morning, and many guests use it as a first introduction to the city before visiting its museums and palaces.