The City of Torino. A research about the financial area in the mid-nineteenth century city

I study the born and the development of the Torino financial area in the mid nineteenth century. In the second half of XIX Century, Torino was the capital of Piemonte’s State, and, for this reason, it was involved in political and economic events of great importance. In particular, before and just after the Italian Unification, Torino became the financial centre of Italy. In the centre of the city, were born many financial activities, banks and insurance societies. In the first part of the paper, I describe the evolution of this activities. Instead, in the second part of the paper I show that all these activities were concentrated in the same area of the city, in the roads where the main bankers had their homes. At the end, the paper shows that the financial area in the Torino of mid-nineteenth century was the material representation of the connections developed between the members of the political and economic élite of the capital of Piemonte. The paper was based on the information extracted from ancient guide of the city of Torino, and from other original historical sources.