The last thing a born and bred Torinese would ever do, it's to blow its own trumpet. However, I feel that, after all the years away from my hometown, I'm allowed to sing its praise a little. Torino is beautiful, of a subtle, somewhat secretive, sort of beauty. Sophisticated and elegant, poised and subversive, always delicious. Its wide avenues lined with plane trees and galleries, with myriads of secret courtyards leading off them, the explosions of baroque behind its deceptively simple facades, have shaped my perception of the world: call it an inescapable aesthetical imprinting.

So there you have it: my unapologetic declaration of love for la mia Torino, a city full of wonderful architecture by visionary architects, past present and future, inside and out.