University of Turin

Public university of Turin founded in 1404: about 83,000 students, historic seat on via Po, alma mater of Einaudi, Gramsci, Primo Levi and three Nobel laureates.

The University of Turin (UniTo) is the public comprehensive university of the Piedmontese capital and one of the oldest in Italy: founded in 1404, it trained jurists, physicians and scientists of the Savoy Kingdom and later of the unified Italian state, and in the twentieth century was the alma mater of two presidents of the Republic and three Nobel laureates. Today it has about 83,000 students, about 15,300 graduates a year and about 120 locations spread across the territory; the rectorate is located at via Verdi 8, in Turin^[1].

From the 1404 papal bull to the via Po building

The university was founded on the initiative of Ludovico of Savoy-Acaia, who promoted a centre of higher learning; recognition came with the bull of Pope Benedict XIII of 27 October 1404. In 1424 Amedeo VIII reorganised it, entrusting its governance to a board of reformers. The early decades were unstable: the school was moved first to Chieri and then, in 1434, to Savigliano, returning to Turin only after 1436. In 1506 Erasmus of Rotterdam earned his degree in theology there.^[2]

Under Emanuele Filiberto and Carlo Emanuele I, when Turin became the capital of the duchy, the university grew; among its teachers was Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinzio, who during his Turin years published the Ecatommiti (1565). In 1720 the school moved into the via Po building, which remained its main seat, and in 1739 Carlo Emanuele III established the University Museum there.^[2]

Revolution, Napoleon and the capital of Italy

In 1791 a student revolt broke out, and with the war against revolutionary France the university was closed. The provisional government of 1799-1800 reopened it as the «Università Nazionale» on the French model; under Napoleonic rule (1801-1814) it was organised into five faculties: theology, law, medicine, science and literature. Around the turn of the century Amedeo Avogadro graduated in law (1796) and Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo in theology (1816); a course in political economy was introduced in 1817-1818.^[2]

In 1859 a School of Applied Engineering was attached to the faculty of science, from which the Politecnico di Torino would emerge in 1906. Even after the capital moved away, the university remained among the country's largest: in the academic year 1891-1892 it had 2,013 students and was, as its official history recalls, «the second university institution in Italy, preceded only by Naples»^[2]. The university is also linked to the legacy of Cesare Lombroso, professor of forensic medicine at the Turin prison: his collections today form the Museum of Criminal Anthropology run by the university, reopened on 27 November 2009, a hundred years after the scholar's death: 684 skulls, 183 brains, more than a thousand photographs. The skull of Giuseppe Villella, from Calabria, was disputed in court until, in 2019, the Court of Cassation denied its return, deeming it a cultural asset.^[3]

The twentieth century: statesmen, Nobel laureates and anti-fascism

Between the late nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century, some of the central figures of Italian history passed through Turin. Luigi Einaudi graduated in law in 1895, Antonio Gramsci enrolled in 1911, Palmiro Togliatti graduated in law in 1915 and Giuseppe Saragat in economics in 1918. The faculty of medicine produced three future Nobel laureates: Salvatore Luria (1935), Rita Levi-Montalcini and Renato Dulbecco (both in 1936).^[2]

With the 1923 Gentile reform the university joined the group of ten universities fully funded by the State. In the 1930s it was the setting for what the university itself calls an «extraordinary cultural and anti-fascist season», with Norberto Bobbio, Leone Ginzburg and Cesare Pavese^[2]. The 1938 racial laws barred Jews from public schools, but allowed those already enrolled to finish their studies: this was the case of Primo Levi, who had entered the chemistry course in 1937 and graduated in July 1941 with top marks and honours, on a diploma bearing the note «of the Jewish race»^[4]. After the war, in 1954, Umberto Eco graduated there in philosophy.^[2]

From an elite university to a mass university

From 1968, with the student protest movement, UniTo shifted from an elitist model to a mass one and opened new faculties: Political Science (1969), Psychology (1982), Foreign Languages and Literatures (1997). In 2004 it celebrated its six-hundredth anniversary.^[2] The largest building project is the Campus Luigi Einaudi, built between 2001 and 2011 on the former Italgas industrial site, between the Dora and corso Regina Margherita, purchased by the university in the late 1990s. The project, won through an international competition by a group led by Foster and Partners with Benedetto Camerana and Giugiaro Design, covers 45,000 square metres, with 70 classrooms and the library named after Bobbio under a single undulating roof; it houses the law and political science departments and was inaugurated in 2012.^[5]

The university today

In June 2025 chemist Cristina Prandi was elected rector with 1,538 votes against the 1,135 won by legal scholar Raffaele Caterina, out of about 4,800 eligible voters: she is the first woman to lead the university in over six hundred years. She succeeded physician Stefano Geuna, elected in 2019.^[6]

Recent years have also brought litigation and protests. In April 2024 the Council of State, overturning the November 2022 ruling of the Regional Administrative Court, ordered the university to repay 39 million euros to students: in 2018 it had collected nearly 95 million euros in fees, against a legal cap of 20% of the ordinary funding allocation, about 55 million.^[7] In the spring of that year, pro-Palestinian collectives occupied Palazzo Nuovo and the Physics building for about 39 days, calling for the suspension of collaborations with Israeli universities in areas linked to the military sector; the occupation ended on 19 June 2024, after the academic senate had suspended participation in a ministerial call in March and the Psychology department had approved a motion to end such agreements.^[8]

In June 2026 an enrolment campaign featuring the face of Primo Levi and the slogan «Enrolled in 1937. If This Is a Man in 1947. Your story begins here too» drew criticism from students; the Coordinamento UniTo wrote: «Let us draw a veil over the possible double meaning of university student number and Auschwitz prisoner number». The university announced the removal of the posters.^[9]

The jpecon.to.it domain in the web archive (2007-2016)

The domain jpecon.to.it was for years the address of the Job Placement service of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Turin, documented in the web archive since 2007. In the July 2016 copy, the site already redirected students to the Job Placement section of sme.unito.it for information and the job board.

The E-CHANGE research project on climate and health (September 2026)

On 21 September 2026 the University of Turin, together with its Epidemiology Unit, and the Città della Salute e della Scienza University Hospital of Turin launch E-CHANGE, a research project on the short- and long-term health effects of climate change, with particular attention to pregnancy and childhood. The project, funded by the Italian Science Fund (Fis 2) of the Ministry of University and Research, studies how heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, extreme rainfall and the spread of disease vectors can affect multiple aspects of health over different timeframes, from days to years.

Related articles: Amedeo Avogadro, E-CHANGE Research Project of the University of Turin on Climate and Health, Job Placement - Faculty of Economics of Turin, Launch of the E-CHANGE project on climate and health, Launch of the E-CHANGE research project on the health effects of climate change (September 2026), Norberto Bobbio

Sources

1. Università degli Studi di Torino
2. Università degli Studi di Torino
3. Il Post — 1 December 2024
4. Centro Internazionale di Studi Primo Levi
5. MuseoTorino
6. Il Post — 12 June 2025
7. Il Post — 11 April 2024
8. Il Post — 20 June 2024
9. Il Post — 24 June 2026
10. Università di Torino — portale
11. Internet Archive — 19 October 2007
12. Internet Archive — 2 July 2016
13. ANSA Piemonte — 21 September 2026
14. TorinoOggi — 21 September 2026