ABOUT TURIN
Le Corbusier described Turin as "the city with the most beautiful natural location in the world": the setting of the city is pleasant, with the Po River flowing through the city, the genteel hills overlooking the city and scattered with pleasant villas and surrounded by the Italian Alps off in the distance.
Turin gave the world Italy as we now know it: Piedmont, with its wily Torinese president, the Count of Cavour, was the engine room of the Risorgimento (literally 'the Resurgence', referring to Italian unification).
Turin also briefly served as Italy's first capital and donated its monarchy – the venerable, possibly past it, House of Savoy – to the newly unified Italian nation in 1861.
There's a whiff of Paris in Turin's elegant tree-lined boulevards and echoes of Vienna in its stately art nouveau cafes, but make no mistake – this elegant, Alp-fringed city is utterly self-possessed.
The innovative Torinese gave the world its first saleable hard chocolate, perpetuated one of its greatest mysteries (the Holy Shroud), popularised a best-selling car (the Fiat) and inspired the black-and-white stripes of one of the planet's most iconic football teams (Juventus).
Turin is a rare mix of baroque and industrial, being an important hub of technology and industry, the FIAT automobile company is based here: The 'T' in the name stands for Torino. The 2006 Winter Olympics shook the city from a deep post-industrial malaise, and sparked an urban revival, with a cultural knock-on effect that has seen a contemporary art, architecture and design scene blossom in the city and, according to the World Economic Forum, nowadays Turin is considered the most innovative city of Italy.
The city has also an important gastronomic culture and tradition: a perfect mix of French (the border with France is just few steps away) and Italian cuisine and one of the best wine productions of Italy. The relevance of Turin in the Italian food culture is proven by the fact that Eataly and Slow food were born here.
Capital Awards 2016
Turin was awarded the second city in Europe most willing to experiment with new and innovative citizen-driven initiatives, proving itself as a 'test-bed' for potential solutions to relevant societal challenges.
A local Ecosystem
Turin currently boasts one of the best local ecosystems for social innovation in Europe, with a number of co-working spaces, technology labs, incubators and accelerators, working together to generate creative communities able to address urban challenges in a globalized world.
Read here the Report "Torino Social Impact - Integrated Action Plan"
LIVING TURIN
La Mole
is a major landmark building in Turin, Italy. Construction began in 1863, soon after Italian unification, and was completed in 1889, after the architect’s death. Originally conceived of as a synagogue, it now houses the Museo Nazionale del Cinema.
Venaria Reale
Venaria Reale is a grandiose estate just outside Turin. In comprises 80,000 square meters of floor surface in the Reggia and 60 hectares of Gardens, adjacent to the 17th century ancient village of Venaria and the 3,000 fenced hectares of the Park of La Mandria. It is a natural and architectural masterpiece that was declared part of the World Heritage by UNESCO in 1997. It reopened to the public in 2007 after completing the EU’s largest cultural restoration project to date. The monumental palace or Reggia boasts some of the finest examples of universal Baroque.
Eyptian Museum
Eyptian Museum of Turin is the world’s oldest Egyptian museum; founded in 1824, it ranks second only to Cairo. Dedicated exclusively to ancient Egyptian culture and art, the museum’s collection has been the subject of interest for some of history’s most important scholars, for instance Jean-François Champollion, decipherer of the Rosetta Stone. To such is attributed the fact that Turin is considered to be the city where Egyptology began.
