A visit to Torino's historic coffee houses is a must for the visitor

The common, ordinary bar is, in some ways, the center of Italian life. In Turin, common coffee houses have evolved into extraordinarily elegant places to have a coffee drink, eat lunch or buy another famous Torino treat, chocolate.

Sitting at a table in a coffee house like Baratti & Milano will cost you almost as dearly as one in Piazza San Marco in Venice. But belly up to the bar and a coffee is no more expensive than anywhere else, less than a Euro, in fact, when we visited.

Enjoy our annotated picture gallery of Turin's famous historic cafes.