Turin: eight districts, thirty-four neighborhoods, over 836,000 inhabitants. One common denominator: Art Nouveau, or Liberty style.
In a form that is perhaps unique in the world, this style found expression in every type of building: from apartment blocks to stately villas, from factories to public baths, from schools to barracks, hospitals, sports facilities, and monuments. This new architecture brought together clients and artists, fusing political and social choices into a single language.
The first capital of newly unified Italy, home to 173,305 residents in 1861, had grown to 415,667 inhabitants by its fiftieth anniversary. Their homes were Liberty-style buildings, reshaping the city once envisioned by Juvarra and carrying out a sweeping plan to revitalize Turin’s historic center. The city’s transformation was crowned in 1902 with the resounding success of the First International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art. It marked the explosion of a new language: an art form that became part of everyday life in a positivist and rapidly expanding city.
It was the birth of a unique model of urban civilization, an expression of the deliberate and united efforts of local administrators to promote the social and economic development of the territory.
