The preparations in view of the start of the service, which will normally only be active on the weekend, are in the final phase
IVREA. The fateful date is Saturday 3 July 2021.
At 9.30 the gates of the Officine Ico, behind the Pino, will open to the public. Entrance there, in front of the former social services-library, in the direction of what were the spaces of the works council.
The setting, the furnishings, the floors, the large wall-skylight, all the original has been maintained and restored. In addition, there will be the graphic and exhibition settings being completed by Sharing Idea of Turin, with gray and orange as recurring chromatic elements in line with the coordinated image of the Ivrea Unesco City; 136 square meters in plan, access to the exhibition hall with the highlight of the sequence of 18 original lockers transformed into mini information boards made captivating by the use of Plexiglas and effect photos of the Factory, a second room with the function of info point- book shop, and the multimedia room with Olivetti table surmounted by the miniaturized three-dimensional reproduction of the entrepreneurial and social miracle of Adriano Olivetti, the same that on 18 July 2018 UNESCO declared a World Heritage Site by recognizing its industrial architecture as the most high.
The block that will open on Saturday 3 July in the former works council will be the Visitor center of the Unesco site.
Place of arrival of tourists and starting point of the tours of the city. Open every Saturday and Sunday, from 9.30 to 12.30 and then from 14.30 to 18.30, and during the week on the occasion of events of strong tourist attraction or booked visits. Free admission, of course, with an info point managed by the staff of Turismo Torino e provincia, former manager of the tourist office in piazza Ottinetti. The opening comes after some missed announcements (the last date announced was that of 7 June) and a bureaucratic process that certainly did not play in favor of speed. Icona srl, owner of the building, has given the spaces initially imagined towards the Salone dei two thousand to the Municipality on a free loan. At the end of May there was the signature and from there the Municipality began to work on the preparations (45 thousand euros of which 25 thousand allocated by the Crt Foundation).
«They all did their best: Icon, the Municipality with the technical office, who is working on it – explained Renato Lavarini, coordinator of the UNESCO World Heritage site -. Now we are happy to have arrived at the opening, aware of the fact that this location is very beautiful, overlooking Via Jervis, as well as of how cumbersome and slow the bureaucracy is in front of restricted buildings that are to be opened to the public. But so be it. We leave the first weekend of July ». The management, it was said, was entrusted to Turismo Torino e provincia until 31 December 2021. In this regard, Andrea Benedino (Pd) presented a question in which he asked why a public tender was not launched, as announced by the administration itself. «When the protocol expires agreement with Turismo Torino, we will publish a notice for expressions of interest. In this phase, to speed up the times, we have considered it appropriate to entrust the opening to Turismo Torino, which already follows the Tourist Office in piazza Ottinetti, integrating the 38 foreseen between expenses and tourist enhancement with 20 thousand euros “. s.b.