People mostly just call it UniTo for short. Its own educational roots reach back genuinely far, to a Roman-era law school founded under Emperor Theodosius I, and later to 25 May 825, when Emperor Lothair I's Capitulary of Corteolona established imperial schools teaching law, rhetoric, and the liberal arts, with Turin named specifically alongside Pavia, then capital of the Kingdom of Italy. So, this university's connection to organised higher learning in the city predates its own formal founding by nearly six centuries.

The university properly speaking was founded in 1404, at the initiative of Prince Ludovico of Acaia, when the Antipope Benedict XIII issued the formal founding bull for the Studium of Turin, with Giovanni da Rivalta serving as the university's first chancellor. Here is a fact most guides skip entirely. Medicine was present from this very 1404 founding, one of the university's own original faculties from day one, not a later addition. So, when this campus describes its own lineage as tracing back to UniTo's historic Faculty of Medicine, that claim genuinely reaches back over six centuries to the university's own founding charter.

This specific campus and identity, historically known as the Facoltà di Medicina e Chirurgia II, San Luigi, developed as UniTo's medical teaching expanded to serve the growing Turin metropolitan area, with a dedicated second faculty structure and its own teaching hospital established at Orbassano, distinct from the university's original, larger medical faculty based in Turin city itself. So, applicants should understand this campus as one of two historic medical faculty structures within the same parent university, not a separate, competing institution.

UniTo's own nineteenth-century scientific revival directly shaped the medical tradition this campus continues today. In 1873, Giulio Bizzozero founded the university's laboratory of general pathology, and was the first in Italy to use the microscope specifically to study blood platelets. In 1876, Cesare Lombroso founded the Institute of Legal Medicine. So, this university's medical faculties carry a genuinely documented history of real scientific firsts, not vague claims of general excellence.

Orbassano sits within Turin's wider metropolitan area, and this specific campus genuinely functions as its own self-contained university site, configured deliberately as a campus in the fullest sense, combining hospital structures with connected logistical services and university teaching facilities together in one location. So, unlike the more spread-out teaching arrangement found at UniTo's main Turin city site, Orbassano offers a genuinely compact, unified campus experience.

Here is the single most important, distinguishing detail about this specific campus worth knowing clearly. The University of Turin's English-taught Medicine and Surgery programme is based entirely here, at the Polo Ospedaliero San Luigi Gonzaga in Orbassano, making this the exclusive site for UniTo's international, English-medium medical degree. So, applicants specifically seeking an English-taught pathway into medicine at the University of Turin should understand that Orbassano, not the main Turin city campus, is where that programme actually runs.

Clinical training runs through the Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria San Luigi Gonzaga di Orbassano, which itself also serves as this campus's own dedicated university hospital, housing the Department of Clinical and Biological Sciences as its main site, alongside the Department of Oncology, both formally part of the wider Scuola di Medicina structure.

Medicine and Surgery at this campus runs as a six-year single-cycle degree, following Italy's standard national medical curriculum. For the English-taught international track, admission runs through IMAT, the International Medical Admissions Test, sat in English and used specifically for non-Italian-medium medical programmes across several Italian universities. NEET remains a genuine requirement for Indian applicants here, exactly as it does for MBBS study in most other countries, and Indian graduates would still need to clear the FMGE or NExT exam to practise medicine back in India.

Orbassano itself sits within genuine, easy reach of Turin city centre, giving students at this campus real, practical access to the wider metropolitan area's own cultural, social, and transport infrastructure, despite the campus's own more compact, self-contained setting. This combination gives students the benefit of a focused, purpose-built medical campus environment, while still remaining genuinely close to one of northern Italy's most historically and culturally significant cities. Turin itself is well known for its Baroque architecture, its own strong automotive industry heritage, and its role as Italy's first national capital following unification.

Students choosing between UniTo's two medical faculties, this Orbassano campus and the separately located main Turin city site, are essentially choosing between two genuinely different structural experiences within the same parent university, one offering a compact, unified campus with English-medium admission via IMAT, and the other offering a larger, more urban, Italian-medium experience spread across the city. Both trace back to the same deep 1404 founding and share the same documented scientific legacy, but function today as genuinely distinct sites with their own separate admissions processes and campus cultures.

Cost Breakdown

Tuition fees follow the same standard Italian public-university, income-linked ISEE model used across all of UniTo's sites, including this one.

Note: no capitation fee is confirmed at any stage. Confirm UniTo's own current, official international fee schedule directly, since specific non-EU figures weren't independently confirmed in this profile.

Why This Campus Deserves a Harder Look Than You've Given It

Most lists mention UniTo's Medicine offer without clearly distinguishing between its two historic faculty sites. However, they do not explain that this specific campus is the exclusive home of UniTo's English-taught programme. The reason is simple. It is about a real, specific structural fact most guides never mention.

Orbassano is not like UniTo's main Turin city site when it comes to language of instruction. In fact, this campus specifically, and exclusively, hosts UniTo's English-medium Medicine and Surgery programme. Furthermore, this is a genuinely important, specific detail that determines whether an international applicant should be looking at this campus or the main Turin city site.

The campus's own unified structure also matters more than most guides let on. For example, most guides describing large Italian public universities describe teaching sites spread across a city. This specific site is deliberately configured as a genuine, self-contained campus, combining its own teaching hospital directly with university facilities and logistics in one unified location. Moreover, students here get a genuinely more compact, integrated experience than the more dispersed arrangement found at UniTo's main Turin city faculty.

One thing most other blogs miss is exactly which admission test applies here. In addition to Italy's standard national system used elsewhere, this campus's English-taught track specifically uses IMAT, the International Medical Admissions Test. Since this is a genuinely different exam from the standard Italian-medium admission process, applicants need to confirm exactly which track, and which test, applies to their own specific application.