From “Hunting the Bonèt” to “Postcards from the Grand Touret” a few games to keep exploring Turin even in the days when we were prisoners of the pandemic. Cues that can serve even today, to have some fun with the help of social media.

In the spring of 2020 we wrote:

“Have some serious fun,” said the Eames, between furniture designs that would go around the world. We, too, propose a few couch games to be played using Atlasfor, waiting for the greater pleasure, of us going around the world, with our atlas in hand, to add more pleasure to our visits.

Staying at home we found that, as Claude Raffestin wrote, the sense of landscape is a nostalgia, a longing for a feeling we can no longer have, either because the places that generated that emotion are gone, or because we cannot frequent them.

Now that we attempt our first tentative steps outside the home, we realize that having experienced that nostalgia has changed the way we enjoy the city and the culture spread across the land. It is a strong feeling for some, fleeting for others, but if we grasp it with proper attention, we may be able to better appreciate magnificent places and aspects of the urban landscape within reach but never considered.

But to achieve these positive results, induced by the forced detachment from everyday life, we must equip ourselves. We must change our gaze: train ourselves to serendipity, to take pleasure in the unexpected, to discover novelty in the places we think we know because we look at them, without seeing them, every day. And, on the other hand, we need to induce those in charge to change the way culture is presented to us in the city, overcoming this phase in which the media spotlight is all focused on the “classic” or of-the-moment hits, and succeeding in shining the diffuse warp of cultural assets and landscapes that makes the entire fabric of large and small towns and their territories precious in Italy.

So for spring 2020, Atlasfor proposes two games-and related services, see below-to experience and refine our relationship with the cultural landscape closer to us. On the one hand, playful explorations to be done from home, piquing curiosity and the pleasure of discovery for our cities (starting with Genoa and Turin); on the other hand, a system of itineraries and reservations to showcase and facilitate safe access to widespread assets, spread across the territory. This is a first experimentation, in the belief that it can make people better appreciate and facilitate access to places within reach but never considered, and in the hope that the summer of 2020 can also become memorable for a new way of enjoying our heritage and caring for our visitors, helping us overcome the pain and bewilderment of so many deaths and illnesses.

First game: “Hunting for Bonèt”
Presentation
In these days when grocery shopping is a bittersweet pleasure that smells of lost freedom, we adapt to what we can find in the nearest supermarket or virtual shopping carts online. But “as soon as you can get out…” we want gourmet shopping for an ancient and mouth-watering recipe: A BONÈT! From this daydream comes the idea of a game in the form of a Treasure Hunt, where the MAP is Atlasfor’s, the INDEXES are the ingredients of the ancient recipe, and the TREASURE is the virtual journey to (re)discover downtown Turin, Atlasfor’s way.

How to playt
Si parte dal biglietto della bisnonna, che andava a scegliersi gli ingredienti con cura, ciascuno in un luogo specifico, nelle botteghe della vecchia Torino e nelle bancarelle dei mercati dove arrivavano i prodotti più freschi. Nel suo vecchio libro di ricette abbiamo trovato un mezzo biglietto. I nomi dei luoghi dove comprava gli ingredienti del Bonèt sono riamasti nella metà del biglietto mancante. The game asks for the completion of the list, thanks to the fact that every day on social channels FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM ADDITIONS will be posted about the PLACES where great-grandmother bought different ingredients.

Each ADDITION reveals a PLACE to search for on ATLASFOR: opening the map on the Center’s Routes, searching through the icons that populate the atlas and clicking on each of them: this will open a card with a description of the place, divided into CHAPTERS, each with different NEWS to open, read, observe. The ADDITION helps you find the place and also tells, between the lines, what is the curious NEWS to be found in the guessed PLACE card (watch out for keywords highlighted in bold!). When you think you have found the right NEWS, indicated by the clue, download the accompanying photo and keep it. Once you have collected all the ingredients you must write to game@landscapefor.eu attaching the downloaded photos and indicating in which places you found them.

Second game: “Postcards from the Great To(u)ret”
Presentation
When was the last time you drank from a green cast-iron drinking fountain, with one hand on your horns and the other spooning under your nose? Yes, we are talking about the TORETs, the more than 800 bull-headed drinking fountains that have been distributing public water for 150 years and in these days of restraint, they gush lonely in the streets, squares, parks and along quiet, deserted avenues.

The people of Turin have always loved them, and for the past few years they have been mapping them, adopting them, photographing them, counting the drinks they have taken… AtlasFor proposes them as a pretext for a game that takes one on a walk around the city.

A small GRAN TO(U)RET in ten stages that traces the history of Turin, discovering secrets and curiosities. Search for a Toret on Atlasfor and explore the point of interest that holds it: it will tell you what clues to look for in that point’s figurative narrative to take you to the next toret, up to the tenth and final one.

How to playt
Enter Atlasfor’s archive dedicated to games Play with AtlasFor and begin your search, traveling on the map from one place in Turin to the next. It may help you to take into account the clues also suggested by the postcards we will post on Facebook. Choose from the icons that populate the map: clicking on each one will open a SHEET with a description of the point of interest (POI). When you find the place (POI) indicated by the riddle-or one of those indicated by the POSTCARDS-open its tab. If you are in the right place, you will immediately find a Toret in the NEWS chapter! Open the Toret’s NEWS: a clue will tell you which card item (MEDIA) to go for. Having located the MEDIA, reading carefully you will find the cross-reference to the next Toret location. And so on from place to place until you close the ring of ten Torets!

An easy example
If we write that “the first Toret, due to containment, snoozes on the couch in the ‘living room’ of Turin”… You’ll know on the fly that it’s in San Carlo Square! Open the square’s Atlasfor tab and here is the Toret in the News. Read the reported text that invites you to “take the four corners of the square as a sheet.” To understand what this is all about you have to explore the card: under the PARTICULAR chapter you find a MEDIA that tells you something: but of course, the sheet is the Shroud! Which in fact is depicted in the corners of the square. In the text of the MEDIA accompanying the image you find a reference to a place: the DUOMO. It is in the tab of that POI (at the Dome) that you will find the next Toret, with another clue, referring to another MEDIA, and from that the indication to move to a new Toret.