Piazza San Carlo

Without doubt the most beautiful of all Turin’s piazzas, San Carlo stands at the mid-point of via Roma, a focus of retail, cultural and café life. Superbly harmonious and symmetrical, the rectangular square, with the elegant porticoed yellow and white façades of baroque noble houses, was designed by Carlo di Castellamonte to be the salon of the city’s intellectual life and was completed in 1638. At the centre stands the fine bronze equestrian monument (known as il Caval de Brons – the bronze horseman) to Emanuele Filiberto, putting away his sword after the victorious battle of San Quintino, an 1838 work by Carlo Marochetti.