Giovanni Filippo Galvagno

Giovanni Filippo Galvagno (22 August 1801 – 27 March 1874) was an Italian lawyer and politician. He served in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate of the Kingdom of Sardinia. He was mayor of Turin under the Kingdom of Italy.

Biography He was a lawyer at the Magistrate of Appeals of Piedmont and patrimonial lawyer to the king.

He was a deputy to the parliament of the Kingdom of Sardinia in five terms, between 1848 and 1857. In 1849 he was appointed Minister of Public Works by Victor Emmanuel II, and later also served as Minister of the Interior (from 1849 to 1852), agriculture and justice. In 1860 he became a senator.

A town councilor of Turin for more than twenty years (from 1848 to his death), he was also its mayor from 1866 to 1869. He found himself administering the city at a difficult time: the capital of Italy had recently been transferred to Florence, and there was fear of a serious economic crisis. Upon his appointment, he received from his predecessor, Marquis Emanuele Luserna di Rorà, a precise mandate: "Turin shall become the Manchester of Italy", that is, the capital of industrialization. Galvagno strove to achieve this goal by promoting the construction of canals for energy production, although he had to fall back for lack of funds on a less ambitious project than the one envisioned by Luserna di Rorà, the Ceronda canal''.

He died in Turin in 1874 and was buried in the Fedio dei decurioni torinesi.