In Turin they like their meat-veal tartare, probably better than you can find anywhere else, or beef marinated in Barolo or Barbaresco, then braised for hours-and like to wash it down with one of their famous wines.

So he walks to the next beautiful café and orders himself a Negroni, then drinks it, unobserved, under the pink light of some old Martini sign. There is nobody to pose for: The tourists are all in Florence and Rome, the fashion set in Milan, and the locals have seen it before. If you see him in Milan, he’s probably putting on a show if you spot him in Turin, he’s just being himself, doing his thing.

In many Italian cities, you can find a smart-looking cigarette-smoking chap with a fedora walking in the half-light of the old arcades. It doesn’t have the swagger of Naples or the monuments of Rome. The well-worn elegance is so unforced, so natural you hardly notice it. Turin is the opposite of bling the charm lies in the patina, not the polish. It’s the city of Fiat and faded prosperity, the former kingdom of the most stylish man in the history of Italy, the car magnate Gianni Agnelli, known not only for his enormous wealth but for his sprezzatura, a studied nonchalance that is the province of certain Italian men. Turin is the city of the aperitivo, the art of drinking and eating before you start eating and drinking. A coffee shop with Art Nouveau interiors seemed to me the most beautifully preserved place I had ever seen, until I went into the next one, with plush red-velvet seats and waiters in white jackets serving ice cream on silver trays to old ladies with impeccable hair. Beautiful Baroque buildings lined up before us, each embellished by quaint signage from bygone decades. In short, I got exactly what I came for, and I expected it to end when we walked out the door. I found Italy in the simple marble floors, in the rustic walls the color of goldenrod that needed to be repainted but fortunately hadn’t been, in the noise from the lunch crowd of regulars in their Sunday best, in the view of the piazza, perfectly framed by our dining room window like a moving Piranesi etching. In the beef that had been braised for hours in local wine. In the sensational vitello tonnato, the famous Piedmontese creation of thinly sliced veal lathered in a creamy tuna-flavored sauce. I found it in the scarlet shadow the wine glass cast on the crisp white tablecloth. That day, I found Italy at my table at Porto di Savona, on the Piazza Vittorio Veneto, a gargantuan square with views of the Po River. It is a fact that some of us go about our lives looking for Italy, and sometimes we find it, momentarily, in the shape of a good pizza or the silhouette of a man on the street dressed in a sharp suit.

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