Torviscosa — Città della Cellulosa

Torviscosa was founded in 1938 as a planned town created by SNIA Viscosa to produce artificial fibres from cellulose obtained from the "canna gentile" reed grown in the reclaimed marshland of lower Friuli. Opened by Benito Mussolini on 2 September of that year, the factory-town was built in under a year, with plant, theatre, schools and workers' housing designed as a single industrial organism. Today free guided tours, by appointment, take visitors through the historic buildings and the industrial archaeology of the original production core, while the SNIA archive, partly digitised with support from the Fondazione Bracco, preserves more than 10,000 historic photographs. A rare, almost unique case of an Italian company town, still legible in its original layout.