Torino

The Regio Politecnico di Torino (Royal Turin Polytechnic) was established in 1906. The present-day institution was preceded by the Scuola di Applicazione per gli Ingegneri (Technical School for Engineers, which was founded in 1859 in application of the casati law  and the Museo Industriale Italiano (Italian Industry Museum) founded in 1862 by the Ministry of Agriculture, Trade and Industry. The Technical School for Engineers was part of the University, which led to technical studies being accepted as part of higher education. In those times Italy was about to begin a new industrial era, which the Industry Museum was to address more directly thanks to famous scholars and researchers dealing with new subjects such as electrotechnics and building science. The new school was deeply concerned with the needs of the Italian society and its development perspectives.
Like other well known Polytechnic Schools in the first years of the 20th century the Regio Politecnico di Torino had several goals and began contacting the European academic world and the Italian industry. Aeronautics began as a subject. Students from all over Italy came to Turin and found in the new laboratories built for the study of various subjects ranging from chemistry to architecture in a positive and helpful atmosphere. During November 1958 a large complex of buildings located in Corso Duca degli Abruzzi was inaugurated in order to expand the volume and the facilities offered by the historical headquarters of Valentino Castle (Castello del Valentino), given in 1859 to the Technical School for Engineers.^[1]
For more than 150 years, the Politecnico di Torino has been one of the most prestigious public institutions at both the International and the Italian levels concerning education, research, technological transfer and services in all sectors of architecture and engineering. In the 1990s, new teaching campuses were opened in Alessandria, Biella, Ivrea, Mondovì and Vercelli. A long history, which bore out the University as a reference point for education and research in Italy and in Europe, a Research University of international level which attracts students from more than 100 countries and which activates about 800 collaborations per year with industries, public institutions and local organizations. The attention to theoretical and applied research, the knowledge and development of cutting edge technologies, the concreteness and realism concerning the management of a manufacturing process or the organization of a service, the care of functionality without ignoring design, the analysis and proposition of solutions to the challenges of the society of today in order to plan a sustainable future: graduates from the Politecnico di Torino receive an education that goes far beyond technical knowledge.