TURIN, Italy, Jan 19 (Reuters) – When Turin hosted the Winter Olympics 20 years ago, it transformed the city’s image from grey industrial home of the troubled Fiat car-making empire to smart Mecca for food, culture and sport.
But the event – remembered in the north-western Italian metropolis for its “Passion lives here” slogan – left a legacy of large debts and unused infrastructure that offers a cautionary tale for Milano Cortina 2026.
“The 2006 Games were very positive in terms of Turin’s morale and international visibility, but less so in terms of long-term infrastructure legacy,” said renowned Turinese architect Carlo Ratti.
Marco Boglione, founder and chairman of Turin-based Basicnet , which controls apparel and sportswear brands including Kappa and Superga, recalls the 2006 Olympics as a collective civic effort that reawakened his city.
“There was an incredible participation from everyone, public and private bodies, Olympic committee, everyone. That was our secret … Turin was the first Olympic city to do something I’d call popular, collective, and it went very well,” he said.
Milan, Italy’s financial capital, and the Alpine resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo will co-host the 2026 Winter Games from February 6-22.
FIAT CITY NO LONGER
Turin’s Olympic candidacy was dreamed up in the 1990s as part of efforts to reinvent the city and reduce its dependency on Fiat, the once-mighty Italian auto giant that is now a part of the global Stellantis group.
The late Fiat boss Giovanni Agnelli, a towering business leader of postwar Italy and the grandfather of Stellantis Chairman John Elkann, was one of the main backers of the Olympics idea.
The Games gave Turin new or upgraded sporting venues, its first metro line, pedestrianised squares, better motorway connections to Alpine resorts that hosted part of the Olympics – and a new sense of local self-confidence.
“It put us on the map,” said Marco Gay, head of local business lobby Unione Industriali. “It gave us the impetus to change, not to be a one-company city but a city that knows how to excel and does well in many sectors.”
Boglione, who enlivened the 2006 Olympics with night-time side events, said Turin was the first Winter Games host that embraced the Summer Olympics format, with “a big city, a big event, lots of fun and entertainment for people in town”.
EUROVISION, TENNIS AND ABANDONED FACILITIES
Tourism has flourished, thanks to top-notch museums – including the world’s oldest Egyptian museum – and a spruced-up city centre that bears witness to Turin’s past as home to the royal Savoy family and as unified Italy’s first capital.
In recent years Turin, home city of soccer clubs Juventus and Torino, hosted the Eurovision Song Contest and the ATP tennis finals, with both events staged at the Inalpi Arena, a venue originally built for the Olympics.
Another Olympic site, the Oval, is a candidate to host speed skating races for the French Alps 2030 Winter Olympics.
But other facilities have been abandoned, with the most egregious examples in mountain valleys near Turin: the bobsleigh track in Cesana, closed since 2011, and ski jumps in Pragelato, also closed and abandoned.
In Turin itself, one of the Olympic Villages has had a troubled history, with parts vandalised and occupied by migrants and drug addicts, until the area was cleared and turned into student and social housing.
“It took a month just to clear out all the garbage and debris. They did a great job, after the previous administration had literally forgotten about us. Now the neighbourhood is liveable,” said Gilberto, a pensioner who lives in the area.
Another part of the village, the so-called “arcate” (arches) – near Fiat’s historic Lingotto factory, now a shopping mall and museum venue – is abandoned, with draft plans to turn them into a biotech park and a sports centre.
“The area … as it is now is a real waste, a real shame, it would be perfect for cultural initiatives,” said Aurora, a 21-year-old nursery student. “I was born and raised here, it’s my neighbourhood, but there is nothing here”.
GAMES COME AT A COST
Francesco Ramella, a transport policy expert at the University of Turin and a fellow at the free-market Istituto Bruno Leoni think tank, has estimated that the Turin Olympics cost 3.3 billion euros ($3.8 billion).
They brought long-term benefits worth 2.5 billion euros, factoring in additional tourism and upgraded infrastructure, meaning a net economic loss of 1.3 billion euros, the professor said.
Milano Cortina is currently budgeted at 5.2 billion euros, including 3.5 billion euros of public money for infrastructure, and 1.7 billion euros in private funds to organise and hold the Games.
According to a study by Italian lender Banca Ifis, they should generate a 5.3-billion-euro “Olympic windfall”, including 1.2 billion euros in extra tourism revenue and 3 billion euros from upgraded infrastructure.
Turin had offered to host the Games again in 2026, saying it would have been a low-cost alternative, re-using the 2006 infrastructure. Once that was rejected, the city turned down the chance to co-host along with Milan and Cortina.
“We did Turin a favour by not participating in the three-way Olympics,” Antonino Iaria, urban planning councillor in 2019-2021 for the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), told Reuters.
He said the city would have seen little benefit from hosting “just two or three competitions”.
TURIN’S OLYMPIC DEBT HANGOVER
Turin is today one of Italy’s most indebted cities, largely due to the cost of investments made from the 1990s to prepare the city for the Games, even if the financial situation is easing.
Debt fell to 3.3 billion euros at the end of 2025 from 3.5 billion euros in 2024. Nevertheless, debt-servicing costs, standing at nearly 240 million euros, took up nearly a fifth of current cash expenditure.
Architecture Professor Guido Montanari, deputy mayor for the M5S in 2016-2019, said the post-Olympics financial hangover forced the city into harsh budget austerity, with social and welfare spending particularly affected.
Having seen what happened in Turin, he said he was “against any kind of Olympics, I think they are really something that should be avoided”.
Needless to say, Milano Cortina backers are confident theirs will be a different story.
“Every euro (for the Olympics) is a euro well spent,” Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who hails from Milan, said in November.
($1 = 0.8588 euros)
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini and Giulio Piovaccari, editing by Keith Weir)
