From Milan to Domodossola, leaving Italy via the Simplon Pass, is 177 kilometres, or, via Bellinzona and the Splugen, 207 kilometres with mediocre roads until the lake region is reached, when they improve decidedly, being of the very best as they ascend the mountain valleys.
CHAPTER XIX
TURIN AND THE ALPINE GATEWAYS
THE mountains of Piedmont are of the same variety as those of Switzerland and Savoy. They form the highland background to Turin which gives it its magnificent and incomparable framing.
Turin, or Torino, was the old capital of the Duchy of Savoy, then of the Kingdom of Sardinia, up to 1864, and to-day is the chief city of Piedmont.
Turin is laid out in great rectangular blocks, with long straight streets, and it is brilliant and beautiful as modern cities go, but there is not much that is romantic about it, save an occasional historical memory perpetuated by some public monument.
Palazzo Madonna, Turin