Turin, Italy ? History has not always been kind to this rich outpost in northwest Italy.

Hannibal came through and burned it to the ground. The French showed up several times, once led by Napoleon, and took the region for their own.

Now it’s held captive by all things Olympic. Streets are closed. Detours abound. Businesses near the skating oval are hurting. But the end is near. Though the Piedmont province is no stranger to being invaded, it also is no stranger to watching its captors come and go.

Among them were some of history’s greatest military strategists, its worst despots, and, finally, a unified Italy: Hannibal and his pachyderms. The Roman Empire. The Germans. The French. The French again. The French with Napoleon. Unification, with the help of Garibaldi. The Fascists. The Germans.

About 200 B.C., Hannibal crossed the Italian Alps with 36 elephants on his way to attack the Romans from behind. Near the foot of the mountains, he stumbled upon the village of Taurasia, populated by Celtic and Gallic tribes, and for good measure against his Roman enemies, burned it to the ground.

Julius Caesar, some 100 years later, treated the region a little better. Recognizing its strategic location as a buttress to invasion-prone France (then called Gaul), he founded Colonia Giulia (now the city of Turin) and granted Roman citizenship to its people.

Then came Roman Emperor Augustus and his 40-year-rule, during which the city was reinforced as a mighty fort, with 18-foot walls and gates – two still stand in what is now called the Roman quarter.

The Mole Antoneliana, left, The Italian city of Turin's most famous landmark is backdropped by the mountains, in Turin Monday Feb. 20, 2006. The Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games are continuing in this historic northwestern Italian city. History has not always been kind to this rich outpost in northwest Italy. Hannibal came through and burned it to the ground. The French showed up several times, once led by Napoleon, and took the region for its own. Now it's held captive by all things Olympic. Streets are closed. Detours abound. Businesses near the skating oval are hurting. But the end is near. Though the Piedmont province is no stranger to be invaded, it also is no stranger to watching its captors come and go.

The fall of the Roman Empire left Turin in the cold, with a series of barbarians at the gates.

The Goths invaded, then the Lombards, who overran northern and much of central Italy and held power for nearly 300 years.

Enter Charlemagne in 773, leading the France-based Franks. He instilled strict order. It disintegrated with his death. And in its place sprung fiefdoms, ruling monasteries, city-states and ruling nobles. It was a crazy quilt of fighting neighbors.

But then the counts of Savoy scored complete control of Turin (after a series of fortuitous noble marriages) and the monarchist family ruled virtually exclusively – while building amazing castles and public buildings and acquiring the Shroud of Turin – until the 19th century.

Which was when Napoleon came barging in and sent the Savoys packing. He lasted 14 years. The Savoys came back. But the little general’s revolutionary talk and liberalism had started something. “Risorgimento,” the movement to unite Italy, took hold.

Aided by diplomats and firebrands Giuseppe Mazzini, Camillo Benso di Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi, disparate parts of the peninsula country eventually came together.

The first king of Italy, Vittorio Emanuelle II, was crowned in 1861. Turin was the new capital of a united Italy.

Until four years later when it was moved to Florence, and then to Rome.

In 1888, Friedrich Nietzsche came to Turin and fell in love with its food and quiet. Then he lost his mind.

Eleven years later Giovanni Agnelli founded FIAT (Fabbrica Italiana di Automobil di Torino) in Turin, and after World War I, fascism and trade unions began to rise. Workers’ complaints on the FIAT factory floor launched the Italian Communist Party in 1921.

And fascism fathered the rise of Benito Mussolini, who in turn, outlawed the Communist Party.

World War II left much of Turin in ruins. In April 1945, partisans who had suffered under 20 years of Fascist control and 20 months of German occupation reclaimed their city.