Turin

📖 History of Turin

In the 1st century BC the Romans built a camp on a settlement of the Taurini, a Celto-Ligurian people, and dedicated it to Augustus as Augusta Taurinorum. The grid of the centre and the Porta Palatina date from that time. In the 6th century it was the seat of a Lombard duchy, and in 773 it was conquered by Charlemagne's troops. Through the Middle Ages it was a minor town until, in 1563, Duke Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy moved the capital of the duchy here. From then on the Savoys filled it with palaces, churches by Guarini and Juvarra, and hunting residences around it, such as Venaria, built between 1658 and 1679. In 1706 it withstood the French siege during the War of the Spanish Succession, and the Basilica of Superga was built as a vow for that victory. As kings, the Savoys ruled the Kingdom of Sardinia from Turin, and in the 19th century the city was the political engine of the Risorgimento: between 1861 and 1865 it was the first capital of the Kingdom of Italy, before the title passed to Florence and then Rome. Losing the capital pushed it to reinvent itself: construction of the Mole Antonelliana began in 1863, and in 1899 Fiat was founded, which in 1923 opened the Lingotto factory with its test track on the roof. During the 20th century hundreds of thousands of migrants from southern Italy arrived to work in industry. In 1943 the workers' strikes in Turin helped hasten the fall of Fascism. With the industrial crisis, the Lingotto closed in 1982 and was converted into a cultural centre. In 1997 UNESCO declared the Savoy residences a World Heritage Site, and in 2006 the city hosted the Winter Olympics, which sped up its transformation into a tourist destination.