Depends what you're doing.  For example, if my goal in a single player game is to kill all the AIs as fast as possible, it will usually only take 100-150 turns (with many difficult/high or difficult/medium), over two or three sittings, a few hours each.  If I want to conquer, usually takes 200-250 turns, and the length of the turns are much longer, since I have to worry about securing captured planets/systems, and redistributing population.  The game I'm doing right now is a "ClusterWars", which was popular a while ago, I don't hear is much now though.  I am keeping myself isolated until I can research sphereworld tech from low starting tech (high cost, too  

 ), and build one.  I got the tech around turn 360, and I warded off AI invasions around turns 175 and 250.  It is now around turn 380, and the generator is under construction.  I think I've put about 90 hours into it so far, over a month.
So, to put it simply, it depends  

  Everyone is different, and every game is different.