Four trips, from the lake to the mountains

Anyone camping on Lake Maggiore or Lake Orta has the advantage of sitting in a corner with easy ways out: the A26 motorway runs down towards Alessandria and the sea, the A4 leads to Turin and Milan. All four of these trips can be done in a day.

Turin and the residences

An hour and a half of motorway and you are in the city. Turin is walked, in the Roman quarter and under the arcades, which run to eighteen kilometres; the Egyptian Museum is the second in the world after Cairo, and the Cinema Museum is inside the Mole. Around the city stand the Savoy residences, Unesco heritage since 1997: Venaria, Stupinigi, Racconigi, Rivoli.

The Langhe and the Roero

Two hours south and you are in the wine hills. Alba is the centre, and around it lie Barolo, La Morra, Serralunga, Grinzane Cavour, Neive and Barbaresco, all a few kilometres from one another and all with a castle or a tower. In autumn there is the truffle fair; the rest of the year you visit the wineries, but they must be booked.

The Sacri Monti

They are nine devotional complexes built between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries on the hills between Piedmont and Lombardy, and since 2003 they have been Unesco heritage. Seven are in Piedmont: Varallo, the oldest and the largest, Orta, Crea, Oropa, Belmonte, Domodossola and Ghiffa. They are chapels with life-size scenes, set in woodland, and you visit them on foot.

The Val di Susa and the Sacra

Westwards you go up the valley that leads to France. Halfway along, on top of Monte Pirchiriano, stands the Sacra di San Michele: an abbey of the year one thousand built on the rock, with a great stair cut into the boulder, and it is the region's emblem. Higher up are the forts of Exilles and Fenestrelle, and the Colle delle Finestre.