Underground Turin: the tunnels tour through shelters, ice houses and mines

How the Torino Sotterranea tour by Somewhere works

Underground Turin is not a museum with a front door. It is a tour format created by Somewhere Tours, the Turin operator behind Torino Magica, that takes a group on foot from one underground site to the next over roughly three evening hours. You go down and come back up several times, with stretches above ground between entrances, and the guide's narrative ties together sieges, ice, bombing raids and cellars.

A typical programme combines three or four places drawn from WWII air-raid shelters, the 18th-century ice houses under the Porta Palazzo market, the counter-mine tunnels of the 1706 siege, private cellars and, when permits allow, remains of the Citadel. The actual sites vary with the date and with which entrances are available, which is why locals repeat the tour. Maximum depth is about 15 metres, via narrow and sometimes damp stairs.

What you see: air-raid shelters, ice houses and Pietro Micca's tunnels

Three kinds of place come up on most evenings; none is guaranteed on a given date.

WWII air-raid shelters

Turin was among the most heavily bombed Italian cities, with FIAT's Mirafiori and Lingotto plants as targets, and public shelters dug for residents survive under squares such as Piazza Risorgimento. They are long concrete corridors with benches and period signage; the account of sirens and nights spent below is the most intense part of the tour.

The Porta Palazzo ice houses

Beneath Piazza della Repubblica, where one of Europe's largest open-air markets runs every morning, 18th-century pits once stored ice collected in winter and sold through the summer. They are the deepest and most dramatic spaces on the route: you spiral down into a cavity nobody at street level suspects.

The counter-mine galleries and the Pietro Micca Museum

During the French siege of 1706 Turin defended itself with a network of tunnels under the Citadel; there the miner Pietro Micca set off a charge that stopped the grenadiers and cost him his life. Part of the network is open through the Pietro Micca Museum on Via Guicciardini, which runs its own guided visits and is not on the booking platforms.

Prices and tickets: Torino Sotterranea, Torino Magica and the Pietro Micca Museum

Somewhere's tour costs €35–45* per person; the starting price we observed on Tiqets is €39* and covers the guide and entry to that evening's sites. Outside the tour there are no stand-alone tickets for the shelters or the ice houses, apart from occasional city open days.

The alternatives we consider: Torino Magica®, same operator, €35–40* and 4.6★ from 1,668 reviews on GetYourGuide, entirely above ground; the Pietro Micca Museum, €3–5* with the guided tunnel visit included, to be verified on the museum's site; and general Turin night tours from €22*, which stay on the surface but cover more squares. Prices checked regularly; the partner's checkout price prevails.

Booking Underground Turin: language, kids, accessibility and cancellation

Dates open on a calendar, mostly at weekends and more often in autumn and spring. Before paying, check three things in the partner's calendar: the guide's language, since most evenings are Italian and English dates are few; the meeting point, which changes with the itinerary; and the cancellation policy, usually free up to 24 hours before but stated on each listing.

The tour is not suitable for pushchairs, wheelchairs, claustrophobia or anyone who finds stairs hard. Teenagers who can walk for three hours follow it without trouble; under about 8 years, tiredness arrives before the end. Bring closed shoes, a light jacket and water: there are no bars or toilets between stops. Holders of the Torino+Piemonte Card get no discount on the tour, but can use it at the Pietro Micca Museum (check the current list of included museums).

Why Turin has an underground city

Turin was a fortress for centuries: the pentagonal Citadel built for Emanuele Filiberto was ringed by kilometres of counter-mine galleries, made famous by the siege of 1706 and left beneath the new boulevards when the walls came down in the 19th century. Meanwhile the bourgeois city dug infernotti under its palazzi for wine and preserves and, at Porta Palazzo, deep pits for the ice trade that pastry makers and gianduja producers depended on before refrigeration. The third layer is 20th-century: the bombing of the factories forced the city to dig public shelters under squares and gardens, sealed after the war and reopened only for guided visits. The tour explains this overlap of three centuries, not a single continuous network.

What to pair Underground Turin with, and how we pick the platforms

The tour takes a whole evening, so it pairs well with a museum day that has no fixed slots: the Egyptian Museum or Palazzo Madama in the morning, a two-hour walking tour of the centre in the early afternoon, a light dinner and then the descent. With two evenings, do Torino Magica first and Torino Sotterranea second and you get the city from above and from below from the same operator.

For this page we look at Tiqets first, which sells Somewhere's tour, then GetYourGuide for Torino Magica and the other evening tours, and Headout only when it adds useful dates. Prices with an asterisk are observed on partner catalogues and checked regularly; the Pietro Micca Museum is booked with the museum.