Information about Ivrea and Canavese

WELCOME TO IVREA

Ivrea is a city of about 23,000 inhabitants, located north Turin and near the Aosta Valley. It is surrounded by the Anfiteatro Morenico, a high ground born from the retreat of a huge glacier that left behind hills, plateaus and lakes.

Ivrea is an old city: it was founded in 100 BC on a previous Celtic settlement by Romans, because of its strategic position and of its gold mine “la Bessa”, and has always been inhabited since then. This is why the city has different interpretations and visits:

• the Roman city: evident in the presence of the two Roman roads “cardo” and “decumanus” and in the ruins, among others, of a theater (fragments embodied in the city buildings) and an amphitheater (in full)
• the Medieval city: in the many churches and especially in the Cathedral, located in the upper part of the city near its famous 3-tower Castle. Of these times we remember Arduino, the first king of what was “Italy”, and Varmondo, a powerful bishop who was an opponent of Arduino himself
• the Industrial city (Unesco heritage site since 2018): starting 1908, a typewriter factory was established in Ivrea by the Olivetti family. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, Adriano Olivetti transformed the city of typewriters into an open-air workshop that was a hotbed of entrepreneurial and social experimentation. A model social project, Ivrea expresses a modern vision of the relationship between industrial production and architecture.

In this city of many elements, water is crucial too: divided in two parts by the river Dora Baltea (connected by different bridges, the most ancient of which is Ponte Vecchio, dating roman times and still solid and used daily), it also originally had a city lake, now dried up, and many morenic lakes all around that still today are part of the “5 Lakes Park”.

Ivrea is known worldwide also for its Historic Carnival, an event that takes place every February and is one of the oldest carnivals in Italy; the highlight of the Carnival is the “Battle of Oranges”, the largest food fight in Italy and surrounding countries, which symbolizes the clash between medieval power and the oppressed people.

Thanks to its relatively small size, Ivrea and its many points of interest can be visited in a short time and touches centuries of hystory!

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