Every design for Rivoli

Have you ever noticed that Rivoli is built on what a glacier left behind? The hill the town leans on is the eastern end of a moraine, the largest in a ring of deposits laid down by the ice of the Dora Riparia, and the part Rivoli stands on is made of its most recent deposits. Even the name comes from the river, from the little banks, the ripulae, along the Dora nearby.

For many people here, Rivoli means winter evenings in Piazza Martiri, the main square, when a skating rink goes up and the whole town meets on the ice. It means summer afternoons in the Villa Colla park, nights out at the Maison Musique in a former slaughterhouse, and the Castello di Rivoli, an unfinished residence of the House of Savoy that now holds the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea. Below it, the fourteenth-century Casa del Conte Verde, the Green Count's house, keeps the older town in view. Roman burials turned up when the Turin to Bardonecchia motorway was being built, proof of how long people have lived on these slopes.

Trace the streets on the map and you find your own: the way up to the castle, the square where the rink went up every winter, the park where summer was spent.