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"View Slideshow\n\nUntil it was selected as the site of the winter 2006 Olympics, Turin\u2014layered, mysterious and blissfully unpolished\u2014remained one of the best-kept secrets in all of Italy. Like its relative neighbor, the similarly hidden Genoa, Turin has been overlooked by even the most discerning travelers. People who came to know Turin tended to pass through on a ski holiday or landed there by some scheduling complication, as happened 10 years ago to designer Timothy Corrigan. &amp;quot;It was one of the best travel mishaps I&amp;#39;ve ever had,&amp;quot; Corrigan says. &amp;quot;The city has been a revelation, a gift to my life and my work.&amp;quot;\n\nCapital of the house of Savoy and the Kingdom of Sardinia, Turin was, in the early 19th century, at the heart of Italian nationalism under its native son Camillo Cavour. It by the Po and set against a dramatic backdrop of snowfrosted Alps, the city is built on a rigorous Roman plan that was revised in the 17th and 18th centuries. Many of its buildings are 19th century, imperfectly preserved but intact, and feature long unbroken arcades behind which a caf\u00E9 society thrives\u2014the Turinese are famous chocolate drinkers\u2014as does a serious, little-known arts and antiques market.\n\n&amp;quot;Authentic, to me, can be from 1750 or 1950. I like mixing periods. I think the tension keeps a room alive.&amp;quot;\n\nWhen Timothy Corrigan comes to Turin to shop, he is, in part, living out a fundamental tenet of his design philosophy. As the founder of Landmark Restoration, a firm based in Los Angeles and Paris that, as its name suggests, specializes in preserving and appropriately updating historic buildings, Corrigan believes in using only authentic furniture and objects in his interiors. &amp;quot;Authentic, to me, can be from 1750 or 1950,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;In fact, I like mixing and bridging periods. I think the tension keeps a room alive. It doesn&amp;#39;t matter where something comes from as long as it&amp;#39;s good and as long as it&amp;#39;s real.&amp;quot;\n\nIt is often interesting to find out what sort of art is shown and beloved in a lesser-known city. In Turin, Corrigan always visits Galleria d&amp;#39;Arte Narciso, a gallery that would seem to follow the Corrigan aesthetic by showing 19th- and early and mid-20th-century art against a gilded 19th-century interior. Continuing a business begun by his mother, Elio Pinottini specializes in Italian Futurist works, especially paintings by Felice Casorati and sculpture by Mino Rosso, whose 1930s bronzes of abstracted athletes the gallery is featuring in a show called &amp;quot;Art and Sport,&amp;quot; in honor of the 2006 Olympics.\n\nCorrigan visits Galleria Luigi Caretto, by contrast, to look for 16th- and 17th-century Flemish paintings. Luigi Caretto, whose gallery was begun by his grandfather, also Luigi, in 1911, draws serious collectors of the genre from all over Europe. Corrigan is particularly fond of the rich landscapes and still lifes. &amp;quot;They have amazing character and atmosphere,&amp;quot; he remarks. &amp;quot;Even the large canvases feel intimate, which is why I would use them in quiet, pensive rooms, such as libraries or dens. They&amp;#39;re all about contemplation and reflection.&amp;quot;\n\nFor an even more dramatic change in sensibility, Corrigan turns to Turin Gallery, whose founder, Gerard Figliola, has an appreciation for 1950s and &amp;#39;60s art glass. He now runs the business in collaboration with his nephew, William. &amp;quot;This glass has remarkable color and translucency, and it makes a bold statement,&amp;quot; says Corrigan, who recently bought a 1950s Fulvio Bianconi cobalt-blueand-orange vase for a traditional interior. He also admired a one-of-a-kind piece that Oskar Kokoschka designed for Peggy Guggenheim in 1952. &amp;quot;Gerard and William often track down this kind of distinctive work, and I love that. I share their love of objects that have a traceable history.&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;The city has been a revelation, a gift to my life and my work.&amp;quot;\n\nTurin has a strong vein of Art Nouveau running through it (the period is known in Italian as Stile Liberty or Stile Floreale), and a specialist in the field is Tina Biazzi. He likens walking into her shop, suitably called Stile Floreale, to stepping back in time. &amp;quot;The way the room is decorated, the merchandise, of course, even the style of the owner\u2014it all seems to come from the turn of the century,&amp;quot; says the designer. Largely French in origin, Biazzi&amp;#39;s light fixtures and glass (by Gall\u00E9, Daum and others) appeal to Corrigan primarily as accents for rooms with different sensibilities. He recently used one of her fixtures in a hall with a low ceiling, where it created &amp;quot;a wonderful orange-gold glow.&amp;quot;\n\nFor an intimate traditional antiques shop that specializes in furniture of the region, Corrigan visits Lazzarini Arte e Antiquariato, whose owner, Luca Lazzarini, seeks out pieces that have some historical distinction or provenance. He limits himself mainly to 17th- and 18thcentury furniture and decorative objects from the Piedmont or Genoa. Corrigan is attracted to this northern Italian furniture for its warmth and purity and the fact that, unlike French or Venetian furniture of the same period, it has a cleanness of line and detail that makes it suitable for a more contemporary setting. Nineteenthcentury Genoese chairs that Corrigan saw on a recent visit &amp;quot;work as well today,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;as when they were first made\u2014maybe even better.&amp;quot;\n\nSecol-Art Antichit\u00E0, which is one of the most prominent antiques shops in Turin, features southern European furniture and objects from the 17th through the 19th century. Although most of Davide di Masoero&amp;#39;s stock is Italian, there are some French, Portuguese and Spanish pieces as well, most of them\u2014as is characteristic of furnishings sold in Turin\u2014in their original condition. Corrigan considers this a virtue: &amp;quot;Sometimes you have to educate a client, and yourself, into understanding that a little wear or imperfection only attests to a piece&amp;#39;s originality,&amp;quot; he explains, &amp;quot;and that it&amp;#39;s much better left that way. It&amp;#39;s much better to be authentic and blemished than monkeyed with and perfect.&amp;#39; &amp;quot;\n\nDi Masoero&amp;#39;s mirrors in particular intrigue Corrigan: &amp;quot;He has several that are very baroque, very gilded and elaborate. I would pair them with more sober furniture. It&amp;#39;s all about the juxtaposition of line, feeling and craftsmanship.&amp;quot; Corrigan notes that while Secol-Art has many beautiful things displayed up front, the best treasures are hidden in back rooms. &amp;quot;You have to be patient with the experience; you have to take some time to get to know the place. It&amp;#39;s like a metaphor for Turin itself.&amp;quot;\n\nAnother of his favorite places to visit in the city is Libreria Antiquaria Il Cartiglio. Located in one of Turin&amp;#39;s famous arcades, the shop carries antique books, maps and prints. Its owner, Roberto Cena, fell in love with the field when he was at university and put himself through school buying and selling books and other printed material. &amp;quot;Because Turin was a center of publishing for so long, there are still incredible resources in the city,&amp;quot; says Corrigan. &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s not just Italian. Roberto has material from all over Europe, all of it of the highest quality.&amp;quot;\n\nFrom Il Cartiglio, Corrigan recently bought a series of early-19th-century prints of the ruins of Pompeii, which he framed and used in a client&amp;#39;s home office. He particularly likes Cena&amp;#39;s Volkamers, rare\u2014and, at the moment, quite popular\u2014 engravings by Johann Christoph Volkamer that depict a piece of fruit and, beneath it, the estate where it was grown. &amp;quot;These big pieces of fruit suspended over tiny buildings look so surreal,&amp;quot; says Corrigan. &amp;quot;They seem to anticipate Magritte. They&amp;#39;re timeless.&amp;quot;\n\nThere is something typically Turinese about the use of old spaces. Cities where so much is husbanded sustain a relationship to the past that is both continuous and custodial. They are full of ambience and, as Corrigan says of Turin, &amp;quot;almost exotically intact.&amp;quot; Will the newly heightened awareness the Olympics bring endanger this intactness? &amp;quot;After all these centuries, I don&amp;#39;t believe so,&amp;quot; says the designer. &amp;quot;Turin is too strong, and too much of a time capsule, for that.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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