Istituto di studi storici
Gaetano Salvemini

The Istituto di studi storici Gaetano Salvemini, founded in Turin in 1979, is engaged in furthering the research, documentation and wider spreading of the results in the fields of Italian and international history, specially focusing on contemporary political and social history.

To this aim it organizes conferences,  training and updating didactics’ formation courses, finances research, grants scholarships, edits publications, acquires documents, books and archival sources, and offers a full service as a library,  hemerotheca and archives.

Naming itself after Gaetano Salvemini has meant to recall many different values and references. First of all a firm tie with the historical studies as main goal of a research not to be scattered along the fleeting suggestions of the political and cultural up-to-dateness. This bound, also, with the resolution of linking the study’s exactness with the engagement of the intellectual who uses his knowledge as a tool for participating to the civil and ideals struggles of his times. Besides, recalling Salvemini’s historical and political mastery, the Istituto has taken a clear and well-defined secular stance.

Finally the actual Salvemini’s life, of a Southern intellectual whom political occasions brought in contact, albeit briefly, with the socialist and workers’ Torino movement of the beginning of last century. In him and through him it is still possible, even today, to grasp some essential and symbolic knots: the difficult meeting between North and South, between intellectuals, society and the workers’ world; in his uncompromising antifascism the lasting ethical roots of politics; in his American exile the international value of culture. 

During all these years and centering upon these ideas and aims the Istituto has struggled in organising a cultural work tending to investigate the social body and its complex history.

The activity has been traditionally oriented towards its role as specialised library open daily acting also as lending library. The library was originally born out of a first core of donations by associations and private individuals, and then it has grown till it has reached the present consistence of  25.000 books and  1.400 national and international journals. The library is integrated into the “Polo informatico piemontese” of the Italian Sistema Bibliotecario Nazionale (National Librarian System).

The Istituto is besides engaged in acquiring, ordering and keeping all the possible documents about persons and events in the history of the political parties and social movements of the Piedmont region, working towards the structuring of a special archives.

The cultural promotion and vulgarization activity has been performed through many national and international historical conferences, didactic updating seminars for teachers, lessons’ series in the secondary schools, expounding on social and cultural history and crucial characters and facts of the last two centuries.

A constant commitment of the Istituto, following Salveminis’s tradition, has been the attention given to the teaching world, offering a periodical updating on history’s didactics to secondary schools’ teachers – aimed both at introducing the most recent historiographical acquisitions, and at making the most of the new contents and methods of didactic research – and organizing lessons’ cycles on particularly important topicis. 

Within the Istituto’s aims promoting research activity has always been given special emphasis. From 1979 till today many scholarships have been granted, interesting different research fields concerning the political and social movements’ history, the history of the political creeds, the international studies.

All this research and cultural promotion activity has stimulated during the years the Istituto’s publishing ventures, leading for instance to a books’ series published by the Milanese publisher Franco Angeli, besides having published elsewhere many other volumes. Moreover it publishes, with the Alessandria - based Edizioni dell’Orso, the journal ”Spagna contemporanea. Semestrale di storia, cultura e bibliografia” which certifies in a way the hectic activity of the Hispanic studies section of the same Istituto. 

The Istituto Salvemini’s President is Valerio Castronovo and Marco Brunazzi is the Director. It has a consulting Scientific Committee, integrated by Norberto Bobbio, Alfonso Botti, Bruno Bongiovanni, Enzo Ferrero, Luciano Gallino, Franco Livorsi, Emilio R. Papa, Alceo Riosa, Massimo L. Salvadori, Sergio Soave, Claudio Venza.

Tha cultural activity is lead by a Directors’ Board integrated by Patrizia Audenino, Alberto Cavaglion, Gino Cattaneo, Federico Fornaro, Marco Novarino, Lorenzo Riberi, Caterina Simiand, Francesco Tuccari, Anto­nello Venturi.

The Istituto headquarters are in Torino, via Vanchiglia 3; telephone 0039.011-835223, fax 0039.011-8124456
Homepage: http://www.istitutosalvemini.it/nw_main_fr.htm --- e-mail: salvemini@yahoo.com

The Library is open from Monday through Friday from 2.30 to 7.30 PM; e-mail:  to0600@biblioteche.regione.piemonte.it

Last modified: 28/02/2004