The basilica of Superga stands at 672 metres, on the hill that closes Turin to the east, and you can see it from anywhere in the city: it is the white point on the hillside that turns up in every photograph of Turin’s rooftops with the Alps behind.
It comes from a promise made at a desperate moment, and that is worth telling before the architecture, because it is the reason the basilica is up there rather than in the centre like every other church.
2 September 1706
What drives a duke to promise a basilica? In the summer of 1706 Turin had been under French siege for four months. Vittorio Amedeo II had left the city so as not to be shut inside it and was moving about the hills, waiting for imperial reinforcements under his cousin Eugene of Savoy.
On 2 September he climbed the hill of Superga with Eugene to look down on the besieged city and work out where to attack. In a small church that stood up there, in front of a statue of the Virgin, he made a vow to build a temple if he came out of it the winner.
Five days later, on 7 September 1706, the French and Spanish army was beaten and the siege ended. Turin was safe, and the promise was due.
Juvarra, and eleven years before starting
The vow was paid unhurriedly. Vittorio Amedeo II became a king, first of Sicily and then of Sardinia, and in 1714 he called Filippo Juvarra to Turin, a Sicilian architect trained in Rome under Carlo Fontana, who had already worked for the pope.
Juvarra designed the basilica in 1715. The first stone was laid on 20 July 1717 and work ended in 1731, with the inauguration on 1 November: fourteen years of building on a hilltop, which also meant levelling the summit and constructing a road.
Juvarra stayed in Turin for twenty years and redesigned half the city and half the crown: Palazzo Madama, Stupinigi, and the Scala delle Forbici inside the Musei Reali. Superga is the piece you can see from furthest away.
Why the basilica looks like two buildings
Look at it from the forecourt and notice the thing that is Juvarra’s signature: the portico of Corinthian columns at the front and the drum of the dome behind it are not joined.
In an ordinary baroque church the facade and the dome form a single block, and the dome shows above the pediment. Here the portico stands apart and projects forward like a free-standing classical temple, while the dome draws back and rises behind it, flanked by the twin bell towers. From a distance they look like two buildings brushing against each other.
Why separate the dome from the front instead of fusing them? The reason is that the basilica had to work seen from ten kilometres away, not from the forecourt. A compact block, at that distance, would have read as an indistinct mass; by separating the volumes, Juvarra kept the profile legible from the plain. It is architecture designed like a logo, three centuries before the word existed.
The building is 51 metres long and 75 high with the dome.
Inside: a round hall, and light falling from above
What does a church with no aisles feel like inside? The interior is a rotunda with six chapels around it, two large and four smaller, and it has no aisles. That means you see all of it at once on entering, and that everything is organised around the central void under the dome.
The dome is wide and pale, with light entering through the drum windows and falling into the hall. It is the exact opposite of Guarini’s Chapel of the Shroud down in the city, where the structure is complicated and the light filters through slots: here the geometry is simple, Roman, and the light is abundant. The two stand ten kilometres and fifty years apart, and set side by side they explain Piedmontese baroque better than a textbook.
On the high altar is the group commemorating the vow: the Madonna delle Grazie before whom Vittorio Amedeo II knelt, with the king at prayer.
The Chapel of the Vow, like the church, is free to enter.
The Royal Tombs, and how to visit them
Since 1774 the crypt beneath the basilica has been the mausoleum of the House of Savoy. Buried here are, among others, Vittorio Amedeo II, who had promised the basilica, Carlo Emanuele III, Vittorio Emanuele I and Carlo Alberto.
It is a sequence of rooms in polychrome marble, with the funerary monuments in their niches and a floor of geometric patterns, and it is worth the visit even if the Savoys mean nothing to you: it is one of the best-preserved eighteenth-century interiors in Piedmont.
Two practical things to know first. The Royal Tombs are visited only in a guided group, not on your own, the visit lasts forty-five minutes and it is in Italian; groups can book other languages for a supplement. And the last visit leaves forty-five minutes before closing, so arriving late means not getting in.
The ticket costs 6 euros, 5 reduced.
The dome: 131 steps, and the conditions for climbing
The climb to the dome costs 4 euros, 3 reduced, and it is 131 spiral steps. From the balcony you see the plain as far as the Alpine arc, and on clear days you can pick out Monviso and Monte Rosa.
The restrictions are specific and worth knowing before you go up the hill, because they are what wrecks the outing. The dome is not accessible under the age of six, for safety reasons, and the climb is closed in bad weather, strong wind or temperatures above 32 degrees.
That 32-degree threshold is not theoretical: Turin passes it regularly in July and August. If the view from the top is why you are going to Superga, check the forecast before taking the tram.
4 May 1949
Behind the apse, on the side visitors reach last, there is a memorial stone. Thousands of people come to it every year, on 4 May.
On that day in 1949, at 5.03 pm, the aircraft bringing the Grande Torino football team home crashed into the retaining wall behind the basilica. The team was flying back from Lisbon, where it had played a friendly against Benfica the day before; the trimotor met thick fog, rain and wind, with visibility of forty metres.
Thirty-one people died, with no survivors: eighteen players, the coaching staff, three directors, three journalists and the four crew. This was the team that had won five league titles in a row and that made up almost the whole national side.
It is the only thing in this article with nothing to do with the eighteenth century, and for a great many Turinese it is the main reason to come up here.
The rack tram, which is half the visit
You can reach Superga by bus or by car, but the right way is the Sassi-Superga rack tram, and that is not an aesthetic preference: it is a piece of working industrial archaeology.
The line has been open since 26 April 1884. At first the carriages were hauled up by a steel cable running alongside the track; in 1934 the system was converted to a rack, that is, a toothed central rail the carriage’s gear grips onto, and that is how it still works.
The figures: 3,100 metres of route, 425 metres of climb, an average gradient of 13.5 per cent with stretches of 21 on the final section between Pian Gambino and Superga station. Eighteen minutes of climbing through the woods, on the historic red and cream carriages.
Watch out for the thing that ruins the day for anyone who does not know it: on Wednesday the tram does not run. And that is the same day the Musei Reali close, so a Wednesday in Turin needs planning. How to do it is in What to see in Turin in 2 days.
The Royal Apartment and the cloister
Beside the basilica is the monastic complex, with a cloister and the Royal Apartment, the rooms that housed the court when it came up.
It is worth knowing because it has an unusual constraint: standard visits to the Royal Apartment are only two a day, with a limited number of people, always accompanied and in Italian. It costs 6 euros, 5 reduced. If it interests you, ask for the times as soon as you arrive rather than leaving it for last.
Practical information
Checked on 2 September 2026 on the basilica’s official website. Prices and hours change, and the tram timetable is seasonal: check again before you travel.
Tickets. The church and the Chapel of the Vow are free. The climb to the dome costs 4 euros full price and 3 reduced. The Royal Tombs 6 and 5. The Royal Apartment 6 and 5. The reduced rate applies to groups of at least twenty on booking, to visitors aged 6 to 25, to the over 65s, to teachers, to police and armed forces and to journalists with a press card. Entry is free under 6, for disabled visitors and one companion, and with the Abbonamento Musei, the Torino+Piemonte Card, the Royal Pass, for licensed guides and for members of religious orders.
Opening hours. Church, Chapel of the Vow, dome, Royal Tombs and Royal Apartment: Monday to Friday 10 am to 1.30 pm and 2.30 to 6 pm, Saturday, Sunday and holidays 10 am to 7 pm without a break. The last visit to the Royal Tombs and the Apartment leaves forty-five minutes before closing. In July, August and September there are evening openings on Friday and Saturday from 9 pm to midnight, in accompanied groups.
The tram (summer timetable, from 27 June 2026). Monday to Friday hourly departures from Sassi station from 10 am to 6 pm, last descent from Superga at 6.30 pm; there is no service on Wednesday. On Saturday, until the end of September, hourly from 9 am to 11 pm, last descent at 11.30 pm. On Sunday and holidays from 9 am to 8 pm, last descent at 8.30 pm. On holidays there is also the experimental Superga Express shuttle from piazza Vittorio Veneto, and while it runs the holiday bus line 79/ is temporarily suspended.
Getting to Sassi station. From the centre take tram 15 or a bus towards Sassi, and the rack tram leaves from there.
How long it takes. The basilica with the dome asks an hour. Adding the Royal Tombs takes you to two hours, and with the tram both ways it becomes a full half day.
On affiliate links, for the sake of honesty. No resellers here: Superga’s tickets are bought on the official channel or at the ticket office, and the tram is a public transport service.
Photo credits: facade and portico by MOs810, interior and dome by Paris Orlando, panorama by Zairon, Grande Torino memorial by DiCarlo23 and tram carriages by Smiley.toerist (CC BY-SA 4.0); Royal Tombs by Jastrow and cloister of the Royal Apartments by Marie-Lan Taÿ Pamart (CC BY 4.0). All from Wikimedia Commons.
