Ivrea is the town Olivetti built, or at least rebuilt. In the twentieth century the Olivetti company, famous for typewriters, calculators and some of the first personal computers, turned this small Piedmontese town into a showcase of what industry could be: factories with glass walls and natural light, worker housing, libraries, nurseries and social services designed by the best architects of the day. Adriano Olivetti believed a company should serve its community, and the result was listed by UNESCO in 2018 as an industrial city of the twentieth century. Walk along Corso Jervis and you can see the buildings still standing, some reused, some waiting.
The older town is lovely too. It climbs a hill above the river Dora Baltea, crowned by a red-brick castle with four towers and a cathedral, and the river rushes through below, green and fast with snowmelt from the Valle d'Aosta. Every winter Ivrea hosts its notorious Carnival and the Battle of the Oranges, when teams on foot pelt teams on carts with oranges for three days. The streets turn orange and sticky, and the smell lingers for weeks.
The landscape around Ivrea is a geologist's favourite. Glaciers coming down from the Aosta valley pushed huge walls of debris ahead of them, and the Serra d'Ivrea, a long, straight, wooded ridge running east of town, is one of the largest moraines in Europe. Small lakes lie scattered in the hollows left behind, Sirio and its neighbours, good for a swim in summer.
On the bike, Ivrea is a gateway. The road north-west follows the Dora Baltea into the Valle d'Aosta, past castles and terraced vineyards, towards the high passes. Lanes climbing onto the Serra and into the hills of the Canavese have plenty of bends and few cars, and the sacred mountains of Piedmont, including Belmonte above Valperga, are within easy reach. Watch for cobbles in the old town and narrow streets that turn into pedestrian zones without much warning.
As a town of over twenty thousand people, Ivrea has fuel, shops, mechanics and good food. Try the local white wine, Erbaluce di Caluso, with a plate of agnolotti, or the toasted hazelnut sweets of Piedmont with a coffee in one of the arcaded streets.