In 1875, the Swiss industrialist Napoleone Leumann was searching for a place to build his new cotton mill. He had abandoned his previous factory in the small market town of Voghera for Turin, lured by the latter’s growing population, railway network and large industrial base. He settled on a then-uninhabited patch of land outside the city and began building.
But Leumann had grander ideas than just a cotton mill. In tandem with the factory, Leumann dreamed up an adjoining village — a refined and orderly community where workers and their families could live with dignity, far removed from Turin’s overcrowded and polluted areas.
