With the Risorgimento, or "Resurgence", the city of Turin became the home of the struggle for Italian unification. At first this plan was pursued, according antimazziniana by a group of moderates from Piedmont with a Catholic and loyal to the monarchy: among these were Vincenzo Gioberti, Cesare Balbo and Massimo D'Azeglio, convinced that the unification of Italy were to come across a federation led by the Pope and by the army of Charles Albert. That was the plan of neo-Guelphs, frustrated by a few years from the behaviour of Pius IX.
To resume some of their ideas, but clearly in the direction of liberal and progressive, was Camillo Benso Count Cavour who, although rejected the insurgency and democratic vision of Mazzini, was a supporter of a program of economic and social reforms which led first Piedmont and then Italy, through the alliance of the elites of the Peninsula, to the level of advanced nations. The program of neo-Guelph Gioberti, Cavour resisted the phrase "free church in a free state" and passivity towards the European events of Balbo he, once he becomes prime minister, moved towards a system of alliances with Napoleon III and l 'England led by liberal governments. Although not considered to achieve the implementation of its program through the participation of the people, however, Cavour encouraged the freedom of association, mutual aid societies and popular education. In addition, he helped transform the Statute Albert, through the practise, in a Constitution Member. The work of Cavour summoned from other parts of Italy some former Mazzini, disappointed by the failed insurrection, who found refuge in Turin. Between there were these Francesco De Sanctis and Niccolò Tommaseo, which in Turin composed the first dictionary of Italian language.
A renewal of liberal thought came with the new century, due to increased mass participation in political life and growth of the labour movement, by the Piero Gobetti. These, in the twenties, was founded in Turin the magazine The Liberal Revolution and then The Baretti, in which he also collaborated Eugenio Montale, Gobetti which had been the first editor of the collection Ossi di sepia. In addition to Montale, Gobetti gathered around the magazine a generation of young people in Turin, like Leone Ginzburg, Franco Antonicelli, Lionello Venturi, Felice Casorati, Carlo Levi, Augusto Monti, Giacomo Debenedetti, Natalino Sapegno and Mario Fubini.
Gobetti condemned the liberal ruling class that had led to fascism, while considering the heir of thought is that of Cavour Carlo Cattaneo. However, Gobetti identified in the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the engine of the moral and political renewal of the nation.
Also in Turin, immediately after the World War, Antonio Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti, Tasca and Umberto Terracini had given birth to the magazine The new order, that would constitute the nucleus of what in 1921 would become Italian Communist Party. This online magazine condemned the reformist Socialists, identifying the Councils of Soviet factory and experience the line of political struggle.
Central to the Italian political culture has been the contribution of many intellectuals in Turin after World War II, among others, the group of students and professors who served in the ranks of Justice and Liberty and Party Action, heirs of thought Gobetti.
Among the associations responsible for the study of historical thought and politics, who are based in Turin, are to be mentioned: the Gramsci Foundation, the Piero Gobetti Study Center, the Institute Gaetano Salvemini, the Center Pannunzio, the Rosselli, the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi and Fondazione Luigi Firpo - Center for Studies of Political Thought.