ORBASSANO, Italy – On first impressions, there is not much going for Orbassano. Once a rural village, it’s now crowded with modern housing blocks and surrounded by a flat industrial landscape. It seamlessly spills into Turin, the largest city of Italy’s wealthy Piedmont region, to which many commute for school or work. More of a provincial outskirt than anything else, Orbassano would never make it on any tourist itinerary.
It probably doesn’t look anything like it did when Sonia Gandhi grew up here. A lot of it was likely built after she left–in the late 1960s, perhaps– and it retains few traces of its past. The one timeless constant are the snowcapped Alpine mountains in the distance, which you can still see on clear days. It is this backdrop that gives the region its name: Piedmont, which, derives from the Latin for at the foot of the mountains.
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