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THE CITY OF AUTHORS!

Famous authors of the 19th and 20th century were born or lived in the subalpine city or just traveled there.

skip There are lots of writers and intellectuals who have influenced the cultural life of Turin.
The famous Edmondo De Amicis dedicated his novel "Carrozza di tutti" to Turin after having traveled the city by a horse-drawn carriage.
Vittorio Alfieri spent his childhood in this subalpine city between 1790 and 1803.
Guido Gozzano, born in Turin in 1883, participated in the cultural and social life of Turin at the beginning of the century and left to his successors the beauty, melancholy and profoundness of his poetic works while the celebrated Nietzsche spent some time in Turin in 1888 before he became insane.
Primo Levi, a Jew who fought against the race law, was born in Turin. D´Annunzio, screenwriter of the screen epic Cabiria, helped Turin to the cinematographic industry.
After the liberation, Italo Calvino joined the Italian Communist Party, collaborated with newspapers and magazines, and began to study at the University of Turin where he wrote a dissertation about Joseph Conrad in 1947. He collaborated with the «Politecnico» of Vittorini, and started to work for the Einaudi publishing house.

THE PUBLISHING HOUSES

The strong relation between Turin and literature is also confirmed by some of Italy’s most important publishing houses which were founded in Turin.

skip The first to mention is the Einaudi publishing house, founded in 1933 by a group of friends, students of the D´Azeglio school in Turin. The founding group of Giulio Einaudi (1912), Leone Ginzburg (1909), Massimo Mila (1910), Norberto Bobbio (1909) and Cesare Pavese (1908) was joined by others such as Ginzburg (Leone’s wife) and Giaime Pintor. Doubtlessly, one of the oldest publishing houses is the UTET (Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese), founded in 1791, the most important publishing house in terms of dimension and tradition. Today the Loescher publishing house, especially known as leader in the educational field, is one of the oldest and most prestigious publishing houses in Italy, founded in Turin in 1867 by Hermann Loescher.

CURIOSITY

Films, poems, cartoons, novels, chronicles, commercials, web pages… this is Turin.

skip In 1994 Alessandro Baricco, one of the most famous and popular narrative writers in Italy, founded together with a group of friends the "Scuola Holden" school where he is still teaching. At this school narrative techniques are taught.