Turin

• 1. Introduction

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  Turin sits at the foot of the Alps, on the western bank of the River Po, and it has been the stage for more of Italian history than almost any other city. It was the first capital of the Kingdom of Italy. Before that, it was the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia and, before that, the capital of the Duchy of Savoy. But here is what makes the story of Turin unusual: each time history handed it power, history eventually took it away again. The capital moved first to Florence, then to Rome. The automotive boom peaked and then crashed. The population climbed above a million, then fell by more than a quarter over the following decades. What kind of city survives that many reversals? And what does it look like when it does? Those questions run through everything that follows.

• 2. Ancient Roots

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  The Taurini were a Celto-Ligurian, Alpine people who held the upper valley of the River Po long before any Roman arrived. In 218 BC, Hannibal attacked them, not because they were his target, but because they were allied with his enemies, the Insubres. Their chief town, Taurasia, fell after a three-day siege. The Taurini then largely vanish from the written record. A Roman colony is believed to have been established after 28 BC under the name Julia Augusta Taurinorum. By the first century BC, the Romans had formalised the city as Augusta Taurinorum. The street now called Via Garibaldi traces the precise line of the old Roman decumanus, which began at the Porta Decumani, later absorbed into the Palazzo Madama. The Porta Palatina, still standing on the north side of the modern city centre, remains among the best preserved Roman remains in northern Italy. At that early stage, the city held around 5,000 inhabitants, all living within high city walls. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the town passed through the hands of the Heruli, the Ostrogoths, then the Lombards, and then the Franks under Charlemagne in 773.

• 3. The Savoy Centuries

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  Emmanuel Philibert, known by his nickname Iron Head (Testa 'd Fer), moved the capital of the Duchy of Savoy to Turin in 1563. That decision shaped nearly everything that followed. Architects were summoned, streets were laid, and the city began to acquire the ordered Baroque character it still shows today. Piazza Reale (now Piazza San Carlo) and Via Nuova (now Via Roma) were added in the first half of the 17th century, alongside the first expansion of the city walls. The Palazzo Reale rose in the same period. Then, in 1706, a French army besieged the city for 117 days and failed to take it. By the Treaty of Utrecht, the House of Savoy received Sicily, later trading it for Sardinia, and gained the title of King of Sardinia. Turin was now the capital of a European kingdom, not merely a duchy. The architect Filippo Juvarra undertook a major redesign; at that moment the city held around 90,000 inhabitants. During this span the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy were built across the city and in nearby towns including Rivoli, Moncalieri, Venaria Reale, Aglie, Racconigi, Stupinigi, Pollenzo, and Govone. UNESCO inscribed this complex as a World Heritage Site in 1997.

• 4. Capital, Then Not

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  Napoleon annexed Piedmont, including Turin, into the French Empire in 1802, making the city the seat of the prefecture of the Po department. That lasted until 1814, when the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia was restored. In the decades that followed, Turin became the intellectual engine of the Risorgimento, the movement that drove Italian unification. Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, was born in the city. In 1861, Turin became the capital of the newly united Kingdom of Italy. Then, four years later, the capital moved to Florence. By 1870, after the conquest of the Papal States, it moved again to Rome. The city that had driven unification was left behind by the very nation it helped create. The loss of political centrality was real, but the opening of the Frejus Tunnel in 1871 gave Turin something different: a position as a communication node between Italy and France. By then the population had reached 250,000. The Mole Antonelliana, whose construction began in 1863 as a Jewish synagogue, rose over the rooftops in this period. Today, standing at 167 metres, it houses the National Museum of Cinema and is depicted on the Italian 2-cent coin.

• 5. Automobiles and Industry

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  Fiat was established in Turin in 1899. Lancia followed in 1906. Those two dates mark the beginning of the city's transformation into what would eventually earn it the nickname Capitale dell'automobile, the Automobile Capital. Benito Mussolini later subsidised the automotive sector to supply the Italian army with vehicles, and postwar demand accelerated growth still further. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Italian economic miracle pulled hundreds of thousands of migrants northward, particularly from southern Italy. The influx was so intense that Turin was said to be "the third southern Italian city after Naples and Palermo." The population reached one million in 1960 and peaked at almost 1.2 million in 1971. Turin and Detroit, the major centre of the American automobile industry, became sister cities in 1998. Then the oil crisis of 1973 hit. Through the 1970s and 1980s, plant closures and layoffs drove a sustained population decline. Over thirty years, the city lost more than one-fourth of its 1971 total. The recovery came slowly; the population only began to grow again toward the end of the 20th century. Today, the headquarters of Fiat, Lancia, and Alfa Romeo remain in the city, and Turin's aerospace firms produced the International Space Station modules Harmony, Columbus, and Tranquility, as well as the Cupola.

• 6. War and Resistance

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  On the 13th of July 1943, 295 bombers dropped 763 tons of bombs on Turin, killing 792 people in a single raid. That night was the heaviest of a sustained Allied strategic bombing campaign that, across all raids, killed 2,069 inhabitants and destroyed or damaged 54 percent of all buildings in the city. Turin stood alongside Milan, Genoa, and La Spezia as one of four Italian cities subjected to area bombing by the RAF. The northern regions, occupied by Germans and collaborationist forces, were not reached by the Allied advance until the Spring Offensive of 1945. When the vanguard of armoured reconnaissance units from the Brazilian Expeditionary Force arrived, they found the city had already been freed by Italian Partisans, who had begun their revolt against the Germans and the Italian RSI troops on the 25th of April 1945. Days later, troops from the US Army's 1st Armored and 92nd Infantry Divisions arrived to relieve the Brazilians. This resistance had roots in longer opposition: during the Ventennio fascista, the years of Fascist rule, Turin had been a centre of anti-fascist movements. Antonio Gramsci, the socialist leader, was among those jailed by the regime. In 1920, the Lingotto Fiat factory had been occupied by workers during a wave of strikes that the Fascist government eventually crushed by banning trade unions.

• 7. Culture, Sport, and the Shroud

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  The Shroud of Turin, a linen cloth bearing the image of a man whose injuries appear consistent with crucifixion, rests in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. Many Christians regard it as a miraculous image of Jesus at the time of his death. The cathedral itself was built between 1491 and 1498, adjacent to an earlier bell tower from 1470. The Chapel of the Holy Shroud was added to the structure between 1668 and 1694, designed by Guarini. On a different register, the Egyptian Museum of Turin holds one of the largest collections of Egyptian antiquities outside of Egypt; in 2006 it received more than 500,000 visitors. The city's opera house, Teatro Regio di Torino, is where Puccini premiered La boheme in 1896. The house burned down in 1936 and was rebuilt after World War II. Turin is also the home of Juventus FC, founded in 1897, and Torino FC, founded in 1906; their local contest is the Derby della Mole. The city hosted the 1934 and 1990 FIFA World Cups, the 2006 Winter Olympics, and the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, which took place at the Pala Alpitour with the grand final on the 14th of May. The publishing house Giulio Einaudi, based in Turin, published works by Cesare Pavese, Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, and Natalia Ginzburg. The city has also been named a UNESCO Design City, and was designated UNESCO World Book Capital for 2006.