Experience
The industrial triangle
A week in the three cities that built twentieth-century Italian industry, and in a fourth, small one, where a company made the first personal computer in 1965 and today no longer exists. The subject is not nostalgia: it is what is left inside a city when the industry that made it withdraws.
On this page
Fact sheet
- Days
- 7
- Cities
- Milan, Turin, Ivrea, Genoa
- Recommended season
- 8 January to June and September to December, with three closing windows to avoid
- Group
- 15 to 20 participants
- Language of the visits
- confirmed at the time of booking, site by site; the Ivrea archive states no languages on its site
- Schengen days used
- 7 out of 90, counting the day of entry and the day of exit
- Price
- Quotation on request
→ Request a quotation · Download the itinerary in PDF
In the quotation we write which sites are confirmed and which are being confirmed, one by one.
Itinerary day by day
Day 1 — Milan. Opening
In the afternoon, a two-hour opening session, with the survey matrix for the week.
Day 2 — Turin. Coffee and the car
In the morning, the Lavazza Museum. In the afternoon, MAUTO, the National Automobile Museum.
Day 3 — Turin. Energy and the factory
In the morning, Heritage Lab Italgas, on corso Palermo: the archive and historical laboratory of a gas company, open to visits by booking and with stated attention to researchers and schools. Opening hours, costs and languages are not published: they are confirmed on booking.
In the afternoon, Centro Storico Fiat: the archive of the company that gave the city its shape.
Day 4 — Ivrea. The most important day of the seven
A full day at the Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, on via Miniere. The permanent exhibition tells the story of an Italian company that in the sixties made machines the world copied, and that then disappeared. For a group of young entrepreneurs it is the most useful case study in the catalog, because it is the only one where the story ends badly and you can ask why.
Two real restrictions, and they shape the calendar: the guided visit is booked at least five working days in advance on weekdays and ten working days for a group at the weekend; and the archive suspends visits in three windows stated on its site, between the end of October and the beginning of January.
Late in the afternoon, a two-hour working session.
Day 5 — Genoa. The sea, the engine, the public contract
A full day at the Fondazione Ansaldo, in Villa Cattaneo dell'Olmo: the archive of an engineering group that built ships, trains and power stations, that is to say of a company that lives on tenders and not on consumers. It is the reverse of every other site in the week.
Day 6 — The work
A guided day in two blocks of three hours. Each team takes one of the companies seen and writes what it should have decided differently, with the dates and the documents in hand.
Day 7 — Presentation and closing
In the morning, ten-minute presentations and discussion. In the afternoon, closing and handover of the certificate of participation.
What you visit
| Place | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, Ivrea | Company archive and permanent exhibition, guided visits with five or ten working days' notice | Bookable |
| Lavazza Museum, Turin | Company museum inside the group's headquarters | Bookable |
| MAUTO — National Automobile Museum, Turin | National museum, booking compulsory above 10 people | Bookable |
| Heritage Lab Italgas, Turin | Company archive and historical laboratory, visits by booking from its own page | On request |
| Fondazione Ansaldo, Genoa | Historical archive of an engineering group | On request |
| Centro Storico Fiat, Turin | Historical company archive | On request |
What is included and what is not
Included: admissions and guided visits to the confirmed sites, the booking and coordination with whoever receives the group, the guided working sessions totalling twelve hours, the materials, one person from the Istituto with the group for all seven days, the final report handed to the institution that brings the group and the certificate of participation in the experience.
Not included: flight, transfers to and from the airport, trains and transfers between the four cities, lodging, meals, urban transport, personal travel insurance.
The season, and why
It is one of the two long experiences that hold up in winter, because every site is an archive or a museum and indoors. It starts from 8 January.
August is avoided.
And there are three specific windows in which this experience is not sold, because the main site suspends visits: 24 October to 1 November, 14 to 18 November and 19 December to 8 January. These are dates the archive states on its site and that are checked again every year, not copied from here.
The reason, month by month, is on the Seasons page.
Logistics and capacity
Milan, Turin and Genoa are connected by direct trains; Ivrea is reached from Turin in under an hour. The group changes hotel twice in seven days.
The capacity of the route is 20 people, but the real breaking point is 15, because the Ivrea archive's weekend group rate is built on that number and above it the structure changes.
The recommended group is 15 people: it is the size that reaches the group rates without going over the access limits of the visits. Above 15 at the weekend and above 20 on weekdays the itinerary splits into two slots, the day gets longer and the cost per person does not go down.
The calendar is built backwards from the Ivrea day, which is the one requiring the most notice in the whole Italian catalog. That one is booked first and everything else afterwards.
Cover
The program includes an accident and public liability policy for the whole stay. The sums insured, the insurer and the policy number are published once it is taken out and are attached to the contract; until then they can be requested in writing, with an answer within two working days.
Do you want it to count as training, with a certificate? This experience can be built into an Istituto program, with classroom hours, a piece of work to deliver and a certificate of attendance. → For groups
Related experiences
The Italy that sells abroad (7 days) · The product before the product (2 days, Turin) · A district where nobody was looking for one (4 days, Catania)
Let us talk about this route
We answer within two working days with the dates, the day by day program and the quotation.