Sunil Sethi: Work and holiday in Italy

AL FRESCO

Turin: At Turin airport last week I ran into two young Indian engineers on their way to the Fiat factory. Gianni Agnelli's auto empire has altered dramatically since the days it was the hub of one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world.

Turin no longer makes cars. They are now produced mainly in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world. Many auxiliary functions have been similarly outsourced.

The vast Fiat estate on the outskirts of the city serves largely as an administrative centre. The Indians were actually employed by a Japanese firm contracted for outsourcing operations.

It was the second summer they were to spend in Turin, an annual spell of about two to three months. And Italy ... how did they like it? They were small-town boys, from Haryana and Maharashtra, respectively, but their faces instantly broke out in smiles.

"Very friendly people," said one. "Italy is easy for Indians," added his colleague cheerfully. "After all we all grew up with Fiat and Vespa."

So it's not surprising that the Italian embassy in India recently reported that it had issued a record number of 250,000 visas this year. Indians not only like doing business in Italy, they increasingly go there on holidays.

There are more well-heeled Indians surfing the net in search of Tuscan villas to rent than, say, heading out to the Andalusian coast or the islands of the Dodecanese.

A friend based in Rome confirms the impression: for the first time, he says, he has begun to notice the number of Indians tucking into penne and slurping gelato at wayside cafes. Ritu Dalmia, who runs a well-known Italian restaurant in Delhi, says she is surprised at the speed with which Indians have acquired a taste for Gorgonzola or risotto cooked al dente.

Generally it is middle provinces of Italy""Tuscany, Umbria, Emilia Romagna""that are the big tourist attractions. One always thinks of Piedmont, and its capital Turin, as part of the dull, dour industrial north.

So imagine my own surprise at finding a beautifully laid- out medieval city, set around a series of piazzas, with 18 km of arcades and some of the finest baroque palaces and churches in Europe.

Home to the Savoy dynasty""from whom it acquired many of its luxurious tastes, chocolate-making for example""and also to the great Count Cavour, leading light of Italy's political unification, Turin serves as a good example of how an old city with a mixed heritage and a declining industrial base has acquired an international sheen.

To the north, Piedmont shares a border with the Swiss Alps, so Turin has won the bid, after Nagano and Salt Lake City, to host the winter Olympics in February 2006.

To the southeast of Turin is flat, fertile country where the 18th century brewing family of Martini Rossi perfected the aperitif Vermouth and created an international brand. (The Cinzano brothers came later.)

At their vast estate, with a private railway station, Martini Rossi (the brand has been acquired by Bacardi) has set up a museum and remains among the region's most generous philanthropists.

To the southwest, the landscape gives way to rich rolling vineyards with prosperous small towns, world-famous trattorias and medieval castles.

In one such town, Alba, a man called Pietro Ferrero, plagued by a shortage of cocoa for chocolate-making during the War years, decided to add hazelnuts to the limites supplies available.

And so were born Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Eighty-year-old Signor Pietro still presides over his private empire.

To add to this spirit of enterprise, the city fathers decided that they needed more pulling power. Turin already possessed the greatest museums of Egyptian antiquities outside Cairo; but in 2000 it opened one of the most impressive cinema museums in the world with a fascinating layout designed by a Swiss architect inside an old synagogue, with a greater collection of films, cinematographic equipment, books and posters than contained at Eastman House in Rochester, New York.

And if that were not enough, in 1982 it instituted the Grinzane Cavour literary awards, building up a reputation that now supersedes the Booker Prize among European awards for books.

Seven awards are given annually""two chosen by high-school students who vote for the books they liked best in the short list. The international award for a lifetime contribution to literature has in the past gone to giants such as Nadine Gordimer, Gunter Grass, V S Naipaul and J M Coetzee, many of whom went on to receive the Nobel.

This year's 15,000 euro award went to the Indian novelist Anita Desai, who has a wide readership in Italy.