The foodie traveller … enjoys a sweet taste of Turin

Turin is famous for patisserie and chocolate art, which the royal house of Savoy exported all over Europe in the 1800s. Pastry chefs rule here, and visitors can sharpen their sweet tooth by hopping aboard Ristocolor or Gustotram, two brightly coloured city trams, for a 50-minute pastry tasting tour of the city’s sights (€20pp). It’s a double treat: a tourist guide tells tales of Turin’s confectionery tradition while a team of chefs prepare and serve arrays of blissful sweets and cakes while unveiling recipes and secrets.

Bignoline are tiny choux pastry balls filled with vanilla cream, hazelnuts, zabaglione and coffee that pop in your mouth. The funghetto is a tiny mushroom-shaped choux delicacy covered in chocolate. The diplomatico, is a creamy puff pastry creation that oozes rum. Trays of pralines and chocolates include cherry-flavoured preferiti and maraschino-filled liquorini. But Turin’s symbol is the gianduiotto, invented in the time of the first king of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele II, and named after the popular carnival character Gianduja. Shaped like upturned boats and wrapped in foil, they are made with ground hazelnuts, and melt like butter in the mouth.

All the delicacies come in tiny portions, to suit the delicate appetites of the aristocracy. “You must not bite them,” says one of the pastry chefs, Giovanni dell’Agnese. “You swallow them in one gulp, just like aristocratic ladies did, to avoid dirty fingers.”