Capable of audacious projects – Ivrea’s Marquis Arduino was “the first Italian man who, in the year one thousand, dared dream of an independent Kingdom of Italy” – the Canavese area has been home to prominent cultural exponents also in modern and contemporary times: historical narrator Carlo Botta, liberal politician Massimo d’Azeglio, poet Guido Gozzano, diplomat and verse composer Costantino Nigra, writer Salvator Gotta, and above all the renown librettist and dramaturg Giuseppe Giacosa.

Adriano’s Olivetti sowed generously on this fertile land, up to turning Ivrea into a sort of “Athens of the Fifties”. Writers, poets, painters, artists, and scholars of any political belief were involved in the creation of an unmistakable style appreciated throughout the world.

Culture was made accessible to all, so as to become a tool to understand the ongoing change and imagine the future without preconceptions.