The Twentieth Century - Piemonte Feel

Throughout the twentieth century, Piedmont became home to a number of important movements. In Turin, liberalism saw illustrious protagonists such as Giovanni Giolitti, Francesco Ruffini, Luigi Einaudi and Piero Gobetti. In the city’s factories the workers’ movement took its first steps as it organised into unions, and the former Savoy capital was the birthplace of the Communist party of Gramsci and Togliatti. At the same time Italian capitalism was to experience one of its most florid seasons in Turin and Piedmont as important companies such as Fiat and Olivetti began production. And again, cinema, the telephone, radio, television, fashion and professional football were all products of Turin.
This city became a place of hope for thousands of people who migrated from southern Italy in the search for a job. The immigration of the 1950s remains a phenomenon beyond compare in the history of this country, a phenomenon that has meant demographic boom but also social conflict between people of differing cultures.
Turin is a mirror of Piedmont on the whole, with its traditions and history and its more innovative trends. Piedmont is the region with one of the highest concentrations of small landholders and the largest number of villages and hamlets. But it is also the region which, together with such signs of links with the past, has been able to renew and modernise. The areas of Turin and Biella have put the accent on their industrial vocation; the Canavese and the Langhe areas have created important industries linked to the land, as have traditionally poorer provinces like Asti, Alessandria, Novara and Vercelli. The Piedmont of the third millennium is a strategic hub for Europe’s new communications routes, a region with proven scientific know-how, the ability to plan and transmit new knowledge, as well as an awareness of its history which is firmly embedded in its territory.