San Salvario, street by street

San Salvario is the most misunderstood district in Turin, mostly because people talk about it as one place. It is not. The strip nearest Porta Nuova station and the strip nearest the Parco del Valentino are separated by four hundred metres and about fifteen per cent per square metre, and they feel nothing alike after nine in the evening.

The park end — Via Ormea below Corso Marconi, Via Argentero, the streets around the botanical garden — is quiet residential. Period buildings, courtyards, a high proportion of owner-occupiers, and the Valentino at the end of the road. This is the part that has done the appreciating.

The station end is a different city: cheaper, louder, more transient, with a rental market driven by short lets. There is money to be made there and we have clients who make it, but it is an investment proposition rather than a place most buyers want to live.

Between the two runs Via Madama Cristina, which has the market and most of the day-to-day life of the district. Buildings on the market side of the street get noise from six in the morning when the stalls set up; buildings a block back do not.

The other axis that matters is Via Berthollet and the nightlife cluster around it. Excellent if you are twenty-five. Less excellent on a Thursday at one in the morning if you are not. We tell every client the same thing: whatever the listing says, walk the actual street on a Friday night before you sign anything. It takes an hour and it has changed more of our clients' minds than any spreadsheet we have ever produced.