Torino Gets Stoked

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Listen to the silence. all the snowy tracks and icy settings at the Winter Olympics elicit a different music from the Games that take place in the summer. Then, even the longest and most lonesome event — the marathon — is run amid the constant roar of crowds cheering every step of the race. The Winter Games has its own supply of electricity, but it's more a gathering hush as athletes contend with their frozen surroundings. You hear it in the cross-country skier's gasping solitary climb up a snowy hillside or in the sharp swoosh of a perilous slide down a bobsled track. Sometimes there's no sound but the wind as the ski jumper silently soars above the trees. Even inside the arenas, spectators will hold their breaths as a figure skater winds up for her triple-triple jump. Still, the winter silences are made to be broken: by the downhiller cracking out of the gate, the grunting speed skater leaning into the finish line, the crowd erupting when the ice princess sticks her triple-triple.

All that winter music is about to strike up in Torino, the capital of Italy's northwestern region of Piedmont. Starting with an eclectic mix of classical and techno beats at the opening ceremony this Friday, the 2006 Winter Olympics will run through an 84-event schedule that concludes Feb. 26 in perhaps its most raucous moment, the men's hockey final. Through it all, the host city (pop. 900,000), the largest and most urban setting yet for a Winter Games, will sound its own vibrant notes as it shows off its unsung charms to an audience of 2 billion around the world.

The gods of the Olympics might begin to get their bearings up at the Sacra di San Michele. Perched on a jagged rock formation nearly a kilometer above the valley that connects the city to the Alps just 80 km away, this 10th century Benedictine abbey offers a sweeping panorama of the winterland known as the Milky Way, where some 2,500 athletes will vie for gold. Look westward from the Sacra's cobblestone terrace and pick out the 3,800-m snow-capped mountains girding the resort town of Sestriere, site of the Alpine skiing events. Turn a bit farther north to take in Pragelato, where the ski jumpers and cross-country skiers will compete. And then swivel east to see the piazzas and spires of Baroque Torino, where five 21st century rinks and arenas await skaters, hockey players and broom-wielding curlers. On its lofty height, the Sacra is a place not only for gazing outward, but for inner contemplation, where the silence is broken only by the tolling of church bells. To hold the games, Torino, known more for its industry than its tourist allure, has undertaken a glossy transformation of its own. Ginio Cerutti, a retired typesetter who volunteers as a tour guide at the abbey, explains that his hometown "lives in the shadow of the Alps, but it's more than just a mountain town." Throughout its history, he says, "it has always found ways to reinvent itself."

Torino has lived many lives. Closer both in kilometers and character to Paris than Palermo, this northwestern Italian city traces its early prominence to its position on the trade routes over the Alps, astride the busy River Po. It blossomed during the 11th century rise of the House of Savoy, one of Europe's oldest royal bloodlines: today in the Palazzo Reale visitors can view a snapshot of how one lived like a King two centuries ago. In the 16th century, Torino became an object of pilgrimage when the Holy Shroud, the white sheet that many Catholic faithful believe wrapped Jesus after his crucifixion, fetched up in the Duomo di San Giovanni Battista. The city was reborn as the first capital of a united Italy in 1861 — though the capital soon shifted to Rome. During the 20th century, Torino was Detroit on the Po, the home of auto giant Fiat. The company brought modern production methods to Mussolini's Italy and after World War II helped fuel a flourishing middle class with its cheap and stylish small cars. Today, the city is known chiefly among sports fans as the home of Italy's perennial soccer powerhouse Juventus — which doesn't even put Torino in its name.