The University of Torino is now 600 years old. It was established at the beginning of the XV century by Prince Ludovico of Savoia-Acaja and was officially recognized by Pope Benedetto XIII in 1404. This date, other than making the University one of the oldest Italian institutes, places it among the few of European Universities to boast a medieval origin.

The University has been closely involved in Torino�s fate over all these centuries, sharing adversities and growth, forming the State ruling class and always being open to exchange with European culture.

In the early years of the fifteenth century, it expanded to giving Doctorate courses in Law, Theology, Medicine and Art, it had a seat in the city center, and has had prestigious lecturers and students (the most famous being Erasmus of Rotterdam, who graduated at Torino on 4th September 1506). Except for a period of crisis during the French occupation in the mid-sixteenth century, and other difficulties a century later due to wars and plagues, the University continued to grow, particularly during the Dukedoms of Emanuele Filiberto, Carlo Emanuele I and Vittorio Amedeo II. We owe the building of the present seat in Via Po (1721), the opening of the Province Colleges, and an important reform of University statutes to these people. After the French revolution and Napoleon (who had chosen to make Torino the second University of the empire after Paris), the University of Torino added to its cultural organization and modern education during the nineteenth century by creating new faculties and building structures for teaching and research. Moreover, it was one of the main centers of renewal of national awareness and contact with Europe for both humanistic and scientific cultures. For example, Augustin Cauchy, one of the world's greatest mathematicians came to teach Physics here in 1832. Shortly after, the Science Faculty was instated with teachers such as Avogadro, Plana, Defilippi, Sobrero, Menabrea, Peano. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the University branched out and Galileo Ferraris set up the basis of the Polytechnic. Jakob Moleschott, Guido Bizzozero, Carlo Forlanini, Edoardo Barroncito were great nineteenth century clinicians in the Faculty of Medicine, and later Cesare Lombroso also joined. The Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi Montalcini also came from this same medical school. In the last century, the Faculty of Arts had teachers such as Graf, Pareyson, Abbagnano, and Mila. Luigi Einaudi and Norberto Bobbio were teachers in Law and many leaders in of the political and social Italian scenes in the twentieth century such as Gramsci and Gobetti, Togliatti and Bontempelli came from The University of Torino.

Today the University of Torino is one of the most prestigious amongst all Italian universities. With its 12 Faculties, 55 Departments and approximately 66,000 students, it is today one of the largest in Italy. It covers all disciplines except Engineering and Architecture. It has a long tradition of international cooperation both in the field of research and education. In recent years relationships with universities abroad have grown constantly and today the University of Torino maintains roughly 370 formal agreements. The university is also involved in numerous international networks, also in the context of European programmes for research and education, provides a large number of international courses and is host to large numbers of students, teachers and researchers who participate in European mobility programmes. Since 1980, the University of Torino has been taking part to the research projects that are founded by the European Union as well as by other international organisations. The presence of our University is particularly important in the framework of the European projects that are mainly founded by the Framework Research and Development Programme. Within the 6th Framework Programme (2002-2006), the University of Torino has submitted several projects in all the areas the Programme encompasses. By doing so, it has confirmed its involvement and active participation. It has been assigned 50 research contracts and it will coordinate eight of them. About 50% of the European funding has been allocated to research and development projects (IP and STREP). Another significant part of the available financial resources has been used for the Excellence Networks. It should also be underlined that the participation to specific programmes for researchersâ?? training and mobility has also been more than satisfactory.