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The University of Turin (Italian: Università degli Studi di Torino, UNITO) is a public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and continues to play an important role in research and training.
The University of Turin was founded as a studium in 1404, under the initiative of Prince Ludovico di Savoia. From 1427 to 1436 the seat of the university was transferred to Chieri and Savigliano. It was closed in 1536 following the invasion of the Savoy lands by France, and reestablished by Duke Emmanuel Philibert thirty years later. It started to gain its modern shape following the model of the University of Bologna, although significant development did not occur until the reforms made by Victor Amadeus II, who also created the Collegio delle Province for students not natives of Turin.
With the reforms carried out by Victor Amadeus II, the University of Turin became a new reference model for many other universities. During the 19th century, the university faced an enormous growth in faculty and endowment size, becoming a point of reference of the Italian Positivism. Notable scholars of this period include Cesare Lombroso, Carlo Forlanini, and Arturo Graf.
In the 20th century, the University of Turin was one of the centres of the Italian anti-fascism movement. After the post-war period, the increase in the number of students and the improvement of campus structure were imposed, although they lost some of their importance until a new wave of investments was carried out at the end of that century. The new impulse was performed in collaboration with other national and international research centres, as well as with local organizations and the Italian Minister of Public Instruction.
By the end of the 1990s, the local campuses of Alessandria, Novara, and Vercelli became autonomous units under the new University of Eastern Piedmont.
At the beginning of the 15th century, instability in the Lombard region caused by the political and military crisis, coupled with the untimely death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, induced the teaching staff of the Universities of Pavia and Piacenza to propose to Ludovico di Savoia-Acaia the creation of a new Studium generale.
Choice of the location fell on Turin for a number of reasons: first, it was at the crossroads between the Alps, Liguria and Lombardy; it was also an episcopal seat and in addition, the Savoy Prince was willing to establish a university on his own land, like those in other parts of Italy. In autumn 1404, a bull issued by Benedict XIII, the Avignon Pope, marked the actual birth of a centre of higher learning, formally ratified in 1412 by the Emperor Sigmund's certification and subsequently, in 1413, by a bull issued by antipope John XXIII, the Pisan Pope, and probably by another issued in 1419 by Martin V, Pope of Rome, and by a series of papal privileges. The new institution, which initially only held courses in civil and canon law, was authorized to confer both the academic "licentia" and "doctoratus" titles that later became a single "laurea" (degree) title. The Bishop, as Rector of Studies, proclaimed and conferred the title on the new doctors.
The early decades were marked by discontinuity, due to epidemics and crises that plagued the region between the 1420s and the 1430s following the annexation of the Piedmont territories to the Duchy of Savoy and by difficult relations between the university and the local public administration. After a series of interruptions in its activities, the university was moved to Chieri (between 1427 and 1434) and later, in 1434, to Savigliano.
In 1436, when the institution returned to Turin, Ludovico di Savoia, who succeeded Amedeo VIII, introduced a new order of studies whereby the government gained greater control over the university. The ducal licenses of 6 October 1436 set up the three faculties of Theology, Arts and Medicine, and Law, and twenty-five lectureships or chairs. The growth and development of the role of Turin as the subalpine capital led to the consolidation of the university and stability that lasted for almost a hundred years.
From 1443 the university was housed in a modest building purchased and refurbished by the city for this purpose on the corner of via Doragrossa (now Via Garibaldi) and via dello Studio (today's via San Francesco d'Assisi) directly behind the Town Hall, until the opening of the university premises in via Po, in 1720. The Study, closed at the beginning of 1536 with the French occupation, reopened in 1558 with lecturers at Mondovì; it was re-established in Turin in 1566.
With Emmanuel Philibert and Charles Emmanuel I, the university enjoyed a season of great prosperity due to the presence of illustrious teachers and a sizeable and culturally motivated student body. However, a lengthy period of decline set in around the second half of the 17th century because of plagues, famines and continual wars: courses were irregular or temporarily suspended, the number of chairs was reduced, and for those temporarily vacant, it was necessary to resort to private instruction.
The opening of the new premises marked a major turning point in the history of the greatest Piedmontese educational institution. The inauguration building in via Po, close to Piazza Castello, and the seats of power and other educational institutions of the city, coincided with the academic year 1720–1721, the first year of the reform of university studies passed by Victor Amadeus II in the context of a radical renewal at all levels of public administration and education.
Victor Amadeus II was convinced that an efficient university controlled directly by the state was the only way to form a faithful and well-trained ruling class that could support him in the process of modernizing the Nation. While the War of Spanish Succession was still being fought, the Duke had entrusted his officials to gather information concerning the structure of the major Italian and foreign universities, and charged the Sicilian jurist Francesco D'Aguirre with the task of drawing up a reorganization project.
Among the notable innovations of the reform enacted by Victor Amadeus was the opening of the Collegio delle Province (Halls of Residence for the Provinces), which housed one hundred young people of low social extraction to aid them in completing their studies at the State's expenses, and the establishment of the chair of Eloquenza Italiana (Italian rhetoric) alongside that of Latin. This had a noteworthy effect on the cultural-linguistic models of the Duchy. At the time, the Piedmontese Studium became a point of reference for university reforms at Parma and Modena and subsequently, a model for the universities in Cagliari and Sassari.
Charles Emmanuel III continued the policy of innovation and consolidation begun by Victor Amadeus II and created a University Museum in 1739. However, in the last decades of the 18th century, the course of events at the university, closely connected to international developments, led to great urban unrest and the loss of state prestige. The revolt of university students in 1791 joined by artisans who stormed the "Collegio delle Province" in 1792 causing numerous victims, was a clear instance of this conflict.
The university and "Collegio" were closed in the autumn of the same year when war broke out against revolutionary France. In January 1799, the provisional Piedmontese government reopened the university under the control of the "Comité d'instruction publique" (Committee for Public Instruction). In summer 1800, the second provisional government transformed the university into a national university and replaced the faculties with eight special schools, which were based on the existing pattern: chemistry and rural economy, surgery, drawing and fine arts, legislation, medicine, physical and mathematical sciences, literature and veterinary medicine. Two years later, literature was abolished, medicine and surgery were merged and many chairs were suppressed for financial reasons.
Another milestone in the Turin university system was the introduction of the new Imperial order, since Piedmont had become a French Department; this involved the personal appointment by Napoleon of a rector to head each university. Because of its size, number of chairs, teaching staff and students the Piedmontese University became the second largest in the empire after Paris.
A famous student of this age was Joseph-Louis Lagrange.
With the fall of Napoleon, Victor Emmanuel I brought back the former legislation of the Savoy regime. Innovations in the following years involved the establishment of the chair of political economy in the Faculty of Law in 1817, the opening of a veterinary school at Venaria in 1818, and a new procedure for the appointment of the rector by the academic staff of each faculty, who proposed to the sovereign a list of names of retired or teaching professors.
The uprisings in 1821 were supported by students in Turin to the extent that the Collegio delle Province had to be closed and the university itself operated only to a limited degree. To prevent student assemblies in the capital, it was ordered that all students who did not come from the provinces of Turin, Pinerolo and Susa would continue their education in their place of residence, where coaches went to supervise the progress of their studies and to conduct so-called "private" examinations. In this period too participation in the appointment of the rector was restricted: the president of the magistrature submitted the names of five candidates to the king, chosen among the teaching staff of surgery, medicine, sciences, Law, Literature and Theology but without the involvement of the professors.
Charles Albert's opening up to moderate liberalism and his international outlook had positive effects on the university, too: like the development of institutions and the foundation of others, in addition to the appointment of illustrious scholars such as the French Augustin Cauchy to teach sublime physics and the Dalmatian Pier Alessandro Paravia to the chair of Italian rhetoric.
In 1832 the Institute of Forensic Medicine was set up, in 1837 a specialization course in obstetrics was introduced and a new theatre and museum of anatomy was opened at the San Giovanni Battista Hospital to bring together the materials stored at the university and those collected since 1818 at the Museum of Pathological Anatomy. In 1842 the Collegio delle Province was reopened and students gradually resumed attending courses, which were better organized thanks to the increased number of chairs. An Upper School of Methods and the chair of the military history of Italy (1846)—which became the chair of modern history—were set up. The chair of political economy was revived.
The new order of 1850 redesigned the Medicine and Surgery course to give scope for clinical experience and practice in hospitals and laid the foundations for the School of Pharmacology, which later became a faculty.
Cultural life involving intellectuals and exiles, journalists and politicians was very lively inside and outside the university until the capital was moved to Florence: its decline commenced when members of the teaching staff were called to government duties or to State management. Thus the circles that gravitated around the Court thinned and the City itself dropped from 220,000 inhabitants to less than 190,000.
However, the university managed to find new life among the science faculties and their staff: in fact, in early 1864, Filippo de Filippi, professor of zoology in the Science Faculty, held the first lecture in Italy on the theories of Charles Darwin. At his death, in 1867, Michele Lessona succeeded to the chair and became director of the Museum of Zoology, then dean of the Faculty of Sciences and, finally, rector from 1877 to 1880.
Text from the Wikipedia article “University of Turin”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.