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Politecnico di Torino

Turin's public university of engineering and architecture, formed in 1906 from the School of Applied Engineering (1859) and the Industrial Museum (1862).

The rector of the Politecnico speaking in public
From a publication by ANSA Piemonte, 2026-09-16

The Politecnico di Torino is Turin's public university of engineering and architecture. It has carried this name since 1906 and grew out of two older institutions: the School of Applied Engineering for engineers, created in 1859, and the Italian Industrial Museum, founded in 1862.[1] Among its premises is the Castello del Valentino, a Savoy residence listed since 1997 as a UNESCO World Heritage site, where the university teaches architecture.[2]

The two roots: the School of Applied Engineering and the Industrial Museum

The 1859 Casati Law set up a School of Applied Engineering for engineers within the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University; three years later the Italian Industrial Museum was founded.[1] Galileo Ferraris trained and taught at these two schools: graduating in civil engineering in 1869, he became an assistant and then held the chair of technical physics at the Royal Industrial Museum, made a full professor in 1879 "without competition, for his well-earned reputation of singular skill".[3] In August 1885 he conceived the rotating magnetic field motor, publishing his results three years later; he died in Turin on 7 February 1897.[3]

Camillo Olivetti graduated with him in electrical engineering in 1891, and in 1893 accompanied him to the electricity congress in Chicago, staying a year in the United States between laboratories and factories.[4] That path would later lead, in Ivrea, to the founding of Olivetti. In 1906 the Politecnico was formed from the two Turin institutions.[1]

Between the two wars

The question of premises arose early on. In January 1912 the city council discussed and approved transferring the Museum Palace and the Castle of the Valentino to the municipality for 3,200,000 lire, as part of a plan for a new Politecnico site on the grounds of the Ceresa farmstead, outside the Barriera di Nizza.[5]

From 1922 to 1925 the institute was directed by the engineer Gustavo Colonnetti, appointed in 1920 to the chair of advanced technical mechanics; from 1928 he held the chair of structural engineering until 1957, with a break during the war years when, having always refused to join the National Fascist Party, he fled clandestinely to Switzerland.[6] On 28 June 1933 the institute's director, Clemente Montemartini, died in Milan.[7]

In the 1920s Pier Giorgio Frassati, beatified in 1990, attended the course in industrial mining engineering;[8] in 1937 the Politecnico awarded an honorary engineering degree to Giovanni Agnelli, one of the founders of FIAT.[9]

The 1942 destruction and rebirth

An air raid in December 1942 destroyed the main building on via Giolitti.[10] On 18 April 1950 senator Panetti asked Palazzo Madama for funds for the Politecnico, during the debate on the budget of the Ministry of Public Works.[11] The institute was reborn sixteen years after its destruction: the new building was inaugurated on 5 November 1958.[10] On 24 September 1959 the Politecnico celebrated the centenary of its founding, traced back to 1859, in the aftermath of the war of independence.[12]

Beyond Turin: Biella, Aosta, Tashkent

In June 1988 the Politecnico closed a series of meetings between IRI executives and students, opened a month earlier by chairman Romano Prodi, with crowded lecture halls and debates running late into the evening.[13] In September 1988 an agreement between the Città degli Studi of Biella and the rector created the University of Textiles, with a three-year course ending in a diploma.[14][15] In November 1995 the academic year of two Politecnico courses set up in the Aosta Valley was inaugurated at the Federico Chabod regional boarding school in Aosta.[16] In Turin, in June 1998, the university put out a tender to renovate a building of the former Deposito Stampati in the area of the Officine Grandi Riparazioni railway workshops, with a starting bid of 760,500,000 lire.[17] In February 1999 an agreement with the furniture company Galliano Habitat launched a series of talks on furniture quality, design and craftsmanship.[18]

Between 2000 and 2002 students ran an amateur portal, cantine.studenti.torino.it, the "Site of the Students of the Politecnico di Torino": personal pages, company job offers, music by student bands, the call for contributors to the Politecnico@Casa project and Linux distributions to download.[19][20][21]

Its most distant campus is in Uzbekistan. Since 2009 the Turin Polytechnic University has operated in Tashkent, born of contacts between the university and the Uzbek government fostered by General Motors, which had a research centre at the Politecnico: in 2025 it had 2,400 students, about 800 of them in courses run by Turin, with up to fifty Turin-based lecturers travelling there each year on assignment.[22]

For the 160th anniversary of its founding, in November 2019 the university organised the Festival della Tecnologia, with open classrooms and laboratories and events across the city, from the Museo del Cinema to the Circolo dei lettori, under the title "Technology and humanity. Technology is humanity".[23] In 2022 the Politecnico announced more than 300 doctoral scholarships, many funded by the PNRR, and joined the European university alliance Unite!.[24]

The Politecnico today

Rector Stefano Corgnati has made the Valentino a cornerstone of the PoliTo2030 programme. In pavilions 1, 3A and 3B of the former Torino Esposizioni, with an investment of about 50 million euros, the university's new campus is rising; the stated goal is to bring its premises beyond 300,000 square metres by 2030.[2] The campus is part of VALE, the cultural hub presented on 16 September 2026, which links the park, the Teatro Nuovo, the Borgo Medievale, the Botanical Garden, the future central public library and the universities;[25][2] the Politecnico has called it a "permanent laboratory of citizenship and culture".[26] The library is expected to open on 11 December 2026, with the first events from 5 November and a full programme from early 2027.[25] The project involves the Fondazione CRT, with 7 million euros for work in the park and for the library, and the Compagnia di San Paolo, with 24 million for the Borgo Medievale.[2]

That same month the rector set a goal of raising the number of American undergraduate students from around ten to fifty, counting on the cost of study and living in Turin being much lower than in the United States: "We want to build a pool of talent that makes the university recognised as a point of return for Italians living in the United States," he said, announcing a mission to the United States for December, reaching as far as high schools.[27]

On the research side, in September 2026 a group from the Department of Applied Science and Technology led by Emiliano Descrovi published in Light: Science & Applications a study of a hydrogel that reversibly changes shape under light,[28] while Team DIANA, a student robotics team, took third place at the European Rover Challenge in Kraków, winning the Best Maintenance and Best Sampling Task awards.[29]

The domain ivfacolta.e-gate.to.it in the web archive (2006)

The domain ivfacolta.e-gate.to.it hosted the site of the Fourth Faculty of Engineering of the Politecnico di Torino, dedicated to training in Management Engineering; the June 2006 snapshot described it as a programme built "on experience that by now spans fifteen years in this field".

A Policy Forum in Science on reforming European research (October 2026)

In October 2026 the Politecnico di Torino takes part, with professor Valentina Cauda, in a Policy Forum published in the journal Science proposing reforms to strengthen innovation in European research.

The Politecnico in Science with INPACT! and second place worldwide in the sustainability ranking

In September 2026 researchers from the Politecnico di Torino are among the authors of a Policy Forum published in the journal Science, "Enhancing Europe's Competitiveness by Empowering Researchers as Innovators": the paper, promoted by the INPACT! network — founded in 2023 and made up of more than 120 researcher-innovators funded by the European Research Council in more than 20 countries of the European research area — proposes giving the European Innovation Council governance of ERC Proof of Concept funding, to make the path from basic research to commercialisation more continuous. The other Italian universities involved include the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Bocconi University, the Politecnico di Milano and the Italian Institute of Technology.

In the UI GreenMetric 2026 sustainability ranking, compiled by Universitas Indonesia across 2,016 institutions in 110 countries, the Politecnico di Torino rises to 13th place worldwide (from 18th in 2025), third in Italy and in southern Europe, and takes second place worldwide in the new "Governance and Digitalization" category.

Study of a material that changes shape with light

In September 2026 the Politecnico di Torino publishes a study of a material capable of changing shape in response to light.[1]

Timeline

  • — VALE is born at the Valentino, the new distributed cultural hub linking the park, the Teatro Nuovo, the Borgo Medievale, the universities and the future central public library in the renovated spaces of Torino Esposizioni. → La Stampa TorinoClick
  • — The Politecnico di Torino publishes a study of a material capable of changing shape in response to light. TorinoOggi
  • — The Politecnico di Torino's Team DIANA takes third place and the Best Maintenance and Best Sampling Task awards at the European Rover Challenge in Kraków. → Politecnico di Torino CronacaQui Torino
  • — The Politecnico di Torino and the University of Turin enter the top fifteen universities in the world in the UI GreenMetric 2026 sustainability ranking. → TorinoOggi Politecnico di Torino
  • — Rita Murad, a Computer Engineering student at the Politecnico di Torino, wins the eighth Amazon Women in Innovation scholarship. → TorinoOggi Politecnico di Torino
  • — The Politecnico di Torino takes part, with professor Valentina Cauda, in a Policy Forum published in the journal Science proposing reforms to strengthen innovation in European research. CronacaQui Torino
  • — The Politecnico di Torino coordinates SUSTAIN-ARCTIC for the next three years, a European project worth 5.6 million euros with 11 institutions from six countries, aiming to make research activity in Arctic and subarctic regions climate-neutral. → Politecnico di Torino CronacaQui Torino
  • — "Healing Heritage", a Politecnico di Torino project on urban heritage and mental health, enters the ADI Design Index 2026 in the Social Design section. → Politecnico di Torino
  • — The Politecnico di Torino presents Torino Design City, a new biennial design showcase running from 8 to 31 October across the city, with exhibitions and trails through historic architecture and industrial archaeology. La Stampa TorinoOggi

Related articles: Adriano Olivetti, Amedeo Avogadro, Biblioteca civica centrale, Camillo Olivetti, Galileo Ferraris, Sito degli Studenti del Politecnico di Torino

Pages linking here

Sources

  1. Università degli Studi di Torino
  2. TorinoClick — 16 September 2026
  3. Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
  4. Storia Olivetti
  5. La Stampa — 30 January 1912
  6. Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
  7. Stampa Sera — 28 June 1933
  8. Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
  9. Treccani
  10. Stampa Sera — 5 November 1958
  11. La Stampa — 19 April 1950
  12. La Stampa — 24 September 1959
  13. La Stampa — 7 June 1988
  14. Stampa Sera — 15 September 1988
  15. Stampa Sera — 15 September 1988
  16. La Stampa — 29 November 1995
  17. La Stampa — 18 June 1998
  18. La Stampa — 27 February 1999
  19. Internet Archive Wayback Machine — 6 December 2000
  20. Internet Archive Wayback Machine — 21 July 2001
  21. Internet Archive Wayback Machine — 21 November 2002
  22. Il Post — 8 October 2025
  23. Il Post — 6 November 2019
  24. Il Post — 17 May 2022
  25. La Stampa — 17 September 2026
  26. Politecnico di Torino - Poliflash — 16 September 2026
  27. ANSA Piemonte — 16 September 2026
  28. TorinoOggi — 18 September 2026
  29. Politecnico di Torino - Poliflash — 23 September 2026
  30. Internet Archive — 9 June 2006
  31. CronacaQui Torino — 1 October 2026
  32. TorinoOggi — 24 September 2026
  33. Il Torinese — 26 September 2026

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