The course would focus on the major cultures, events, key figures and works in the ar-chitectural and urban history of Torino, from antiquity to the present.

The course would be mainly addressed to undergraduate students in Scienze dell’Architettura. Nevertheless, it could be strongly suggested to all other foreign stu-dents visiting the Politecnico di Torino, who can get additional credits in the humanities within their curricula.

The course intends to provide the students of the course in the Scienze dell’Architettura with an introduction to the city of Turin and its neighbourhood, regarded as a possible case study of what they have previously learnt, in general terms, attending the other courses in the history of contemporary and modern architecture.
As its main focus is intended to be the history of the town and its architectures, a basic knowledge of the architectural and urban planning terminology in English would be needed, as the course would be thoroughly held in English. Some general acquaintance with Italian history, art and architecture would be appreciated.

The course intends to make the students familiar with the context where they have been studying architecture and are supposed to live and work for a number of years. Moreover, after a couple of years studying the architectural and urban history in general terms, they would be asked to deep into a specific town, where historical events and protagonists, facts and figures could finally be detected on site.

Objectives
Students would be asked to develop their abilities to understand the history of the city and architectures of Turin, within their cultural and intellectual context. In particular, they should try to define a general framework of key figures and events and compare some consolidated critical and interpretative approaches about them. Moreover, they would be asked to acquire a general knowledge of the basic iconography and build up a commonly shared repertory of images and icons, architectures and buildings.

Format
The course would last 60 hours.
It would alternate lectures, dedicated to the general architectural and urban history of Torino, with more specific seminars, dedicated to the analysis of what could be regarded as the image, either conventional or not, that the city multiple narratives have produced for the last decades. In particular, these seminars would be the starting point for the preparation of the paper that each student would be asked to prepare for his/her final ex-am: Italian mother-language students could analyse the many touristic guides of Torino, published between the 18th and 20th century, while non-Italian mother-language students could focused on planning a number of thematic tours around the city: from this point of view, an extremely important part would be played by MuseoTorino, as the place where to set up virtual exhibitions.
Discussions with active participation will be strongly encouraged, in class as well as at home. Walking tours could be organised, depending on the number of students that could be enrolled in the course.
A couple of intermediate written tests could be possible: questions would be in Eng-lish, while students could answer either in English or Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese.

As a part of the course requirements, attendance would be compulsory.

Textbooks:
1. Michele Bonino, Giulietta Fassino, Davide Tommaso Ferrando, Carlo Spinelli (eds.), Torino 1984-2008: Architecture Atlas, Torino: Urban Center Metropolita-no, 2008 [Italian edition available].
2. Anthony L. Cardoza, Geoffrey W. Symcox, A History of Turin, Torino: Einaudi, 2006 [Italian edition available].
3. Vera Comoli, Carlo Olmo (eds.), Torino Architectural Guide, Torino - London: Allemandi, 2000 [Italian edition available].
4. Giulietta Fassino, Carlo Spinelli (eds.), Torino contemporanea. Guida alle archi-tetture / Contemporary Turin: Guide to Architectures, Torino: Urban Center Me-tropolitano, 2011 [bilingual edition].
5. Davide Ferrero, Beatrice Coda (eds.), Ventisei itinerari di architettura a Torino, Torino: Società degli ingegneri e degli architetti in Torino, 2000 [Bilingual ver-sion available].
Reference books [Italian editions only]:
1. Valerio Castronovo (ed.), Storia illustrata di Torino, Milano: Sellino, 1992.
2. Vera Comoli, Rosanna Roccia (eds.), Progettare la città. L’urbanistica di Torino tra storia e scelte alternative, Torino: Archivio Storico della Città di Torino, 2001, pp. 28-29, 47-48, 103-104, 164-165, 204-205, 267-268, 326-328.
3. Vera Comoli Mandracci, Torino, Roma - Bari: Laterza, 1983.
4. Storia di Torino, Torino: Einaudi, 1997 and ff..

The final grade would be made of three parts:
1. The intermediate tests.
2. The competence on the assigned bibliography.
3. The quality of the written paper.