Turin

Turin is the grand Italian city that most British travellers skip, which is exactly why it works. As the first capital of unified Italy and the old Savoy royal seat, it has baroque squares, kilometres of covered porticoes you can shelter under in the rain, and a museum — the Museo Egizio — that holds the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities anywhere outside Cairo. But it carries none of the queue-and-crowd tax of Florence or Venice, and hotels and restaurants cost noticeably less. The trade-off is that it rewards a slower, café-and-architecture rhythm rather than a tick-list sprint.

Two full days is the practical sweet spot: one for the Egyptian Museum and the Mole Antonelliana, one for a royal palace and the historic cafés around Piazza San Carlo, with a bicerin — the local espresso-chocolate-cream drink — somewhere in between. Stay a third night and Turin turns into a base: the Reggia di Venaria, the cliff-top Sacra di San Michele at the mouth of the Susa Valley, and the Langhe wine villages are all easy day trips, and in winter the Alpine ski resorts are within reach too. Below, the structured planning — where to stay, what to book, how to get in from Caselle, and a realistic budget in pounds — picks up from here.