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Settimo Torinese

A town in the north-eastern ring of Turin, an ancient staging post on the road to Lombardy, later an industrial hub known as the "City of the Pen," where Primo Levi worked.

Image from the ANSA Piemonte publication
From the publication of ANSA Piemonte, 16 September 2026

Settimo Torinese is a town of about 45,000 inhabitants in the Metropolitan City of Turin, on the plain north-east of the provincial capital, on the left bank of the Po[1][2]. A farming village along the road to Lombardy, in the second half of the 20th century it became one of the largest industrial centres in the Turin ring: chemicals, paints, rubber, coffee and, above all, pens, earning it the nickname "City of the Pen"[1][2]. Primo Levi worked for almost thirty years in its paint factory.

The name and the road

The name comes from the Latin Septimum Taurinensem: the place "at the seventh milestone," seven Roman miles from Turin[3]. In Roman times the territory was crossed by the via Gallica[1], and for centuries the village controlled the road to Lombardy, which left the city through the Porta Doranea and headed towards Milan[3]. Today the same role as a passageway is played by the ring road, connected to the A5 motorway, and by the SFM1 line of the metropolitan rail service, which reaches Porta Susa in about fifteen minutes[1].

The castle, the tower and the pieve

In the Middle Ages Settimo was contested between the marquises of Monferrato and the House of Savoy, who prevailed in 1435[1]. In the 15th century the defensive system comprised a lordly castle, a fortified village and a ricetto, a walled refuge where the farming community kept its harvests and goods, the whole enclosed by walls and ditches; the 16th-century wars between France and the Habsburgs badly damaged it[3]. Only the tower survives, probably datable to the 13th century[3], on piazza Vittorio Veneto[4]. In the second half of the 19th century a Turin family converted it into a holiday residence, adding the Neo-Gothic villa known as Villa Calma; the Municipality bought the site in 1912, built a school there in 1922–23, converted into the town hall in 1983, and completed the restoration of the tower and the villa in 2003[3]. Since 2024 its five floors have housed the exhibition Nel segno dell’acqua. La Torre e la città ("Under the sign of water: the Tower and the city"), running until 30 September 2026, which tells together the history of the tower and the role of water in the city’s transformations[5].

The parish church of San Pietro in Vincoli has equally ancient roots: a church of San Pietro is mentioned in 1146 and a pieve of Santa Maria in 1173. The present building is the result of successive works, including the presbytery and choir of 1810 and the facade rebuilt in 1897, when the bell tower was also raised.[6]

The waters of the Freidano

Settimo’s first industry was born on water. The Freidano stream is an artificial watercourse that flows along the left bank of the Po through the plain between Turin, Settimo and Chivasso; along its banks hemp and bone were worked, launderers plied their trade, fishing took place, bricks were fired in kilns and writing implements were made[7], a distant forerunner of the town’s vocation for pens. The heart of this memory is the Mulino Nuovo, a 19th-century milling complex restored from 1996 onward; since 2002 its silo has housed an ethnographic museum with reconstructions of late-19th-century workplaces[7]. Research into the territory’s industrial archaeology began around 1980[7]; the Ecomuseo del Freidano was launched as a project in 1985 and was recognised by the Piedmont Region in 1999[8].

War and Resistance

On 8 August 1944 six young partisans were hanged by the Germans under an overpass near the Pramolle farmstead[1]. In the same months the parish priest of San Pietro in Vincoli, don Luigi Paviolo, worked from the armistice of 8 September 1943 until the Liberation to protect people sought by the Nazis[1].

The city of the pen and of the factories

On 28 September 1958 Settimo received the title of city; the previous year the hamlet of Mezzi Po had been incorporated into it[1]. These were the years in which the farming village was turning into an industrial hub: the Treccani encyclopedia lists its chemical, pharmaceutical, steel, paper and rubber plants, and notes as a distinctive feature the manufacture of fountain and ballpoint pens[2]. In 1965 Lavazza inaugurated the first section of its new plant in Settimo, where output passed 80,000 quintals that same year and came close to 100,000 by the end of 1967[9]. Among the firms present in the town are also Pirelli and L’Oréal[1].

At SIVA, a small paint factory between Turin and Settimo, Primo Levi worked: he joined it in December 1947 according to the Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi, or in 1948 according to other accounts, and became its technical director and then general manager, until his retirement in 1975, remaining a consultant for a further two years[10][11]. Of his specialisation he said:[10]

"I ended up in the paint industry by pure chance. I dealt rather little with paints as such: from its earliest years our factory specialised in the production of insulating enamels for copper electrical conductors."

Primo Levi

The daily journey between the town and the factory also found its way into his writing: "To the list I would also add the journey I made for 20 years from Turin to Settimo and from Settimo to Turin," Levi recalled, explaining that it was on one of those very trips, on a shop sign, that he discovered the pseudonym Damiano Malabaila, under which he signed Storie naturali[12]. The former SIVA building, at via Leinì 84, today houses the MU-CH, the Museum of Chemistry, with interactive laboratories and a Chemistry Bar where chemical reactions are prepared[11].

Settimo today

The town is divided into four districts, Borgo Nuovo, Centro, San Gallo and Borgo Provinciale, and includes the hamlets of Mezzi Po, Villaggio Olimpia, Fornacino and Borgata Paradiso[1]. Borgo Nuovo has about 370 social housing units owned by the City of Turin, and in April 2026 the two municipalities set up a joint working group on their future. "The final goal is as clear as it is challenging," said mayor Elena Piastra on that occasion[13].

In 2022 the area once occupied by Eni and Pirelli between Settimo and Volpiano was put forward by Piedmont as a site for the large microchip plant that Intel planned to build in Italy[14]. The Archimede public library, on piazza Campidoglio, describes itself as a public library with a scientific bent and organises the Festival dell’Innovazione e della Scienza[15]. The local calendar still keeps two fairs with Piedmontese names: the Fera dl’Arlev, the "awakening fair," on the third weekend of May, revived in 2001, and the Fera dji Còj, the "cabbage fair," on the third weekend of November[1]. Settimo is also linked to Turin by line 49 of GTT[1].

Pages that link here

Tender for the new bridge on the SP92 (September 2026)

On 30 September 2026 the Metropolitan City of Turin put out to tender a new bridge over the Po along Provincial Road 92, between Castiglione Torinese and Settimo Torinese: a 19.5-million-euro project, after the authority had already launched the tender for the new Preti bridge at Strambinello.

Timeline

  • — In Settimo Torinese a new piece of street art dedicated to Nilde Iotti, created by the artist Riccardo Degli Emili ("Dise"), is unveiled on the E-Distribuzione electrical substation on via della Repubblica. → TorinoOggi CronacaQui Torino

Related articles: Tender for the new bridge over the Po between Castiglione Torinese and Settimo Torinese (2026), Tender for the bridge on the SP 92 between Castiglione and Settimo Torinese, Tender for the bridge on the SP92 between Castiglione and Settimo Torinese (September 2026), Metropolitan City of Turin, Tenders for the bridges of Castiglione and Strambinello (2026), Primo Levi

Sources

  1. Mole24 — 29 December 2025
  2. Treccani
  3. Mole24 — 30 December 2025
  4. Città di Settimo Torinese
  5. Abbonamento Musei
  6. Mole24 — 31 December 2025
  7. Mole24 — 2 January 2026
  8. Ecomuseo del Freidano
  9. Treccani – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
  10. Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi
  11. Mole24 — 28 December 2025
  12. MuseoTorino
  13. Torinoclick (Città di Torino) — 9 April 2026
  14. Il Post — 4 October 2022
  15. Biblioteca civica Archimede
  16. Città metropolitana di Torino — 30 September 2026
  17. TorinoOggi — 30 September 2026

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