It is one of the richest in Italy with respect to the country's political, military, diplomatic and social history from the late eighteenth century to the First World War. Currently, the collection numbers about 137,000 volumes and booklets and was assembled since the nineteenth century through donations from the oldest aristocratic families of Piedmont like Cesare Alfieri di Sostegno's. It was later enlarged with purchases of other important collections.Holdings include the complete works of the main thinkers and political leaders of the Risorgimento - Mazzini, Gioberti, Cavour, Brofferio and others - and first editions of works that shaped Italian literature and political theory, such as Cesare Beccaria's Dei Delitti e Delle Pene, Vittorio Alfieri's Il Misogallo and Massimo d'Azeglio's Ettore Fieramosca.

An exhaustive range of nineteenth-century and more recent historiography on the Risorgimento can also be found: it includes works on correspondence, memoires, biographies and a number of dictionaries, chronologies, and records.

The complete collection of the Proceedings of the Subalpine Parliament since 1848 is of outstanding interest.

The Periodicals section offers 950 Italian newspapers and magazines published during the Risorgimento. Titles include "Il Risorgimento" (the organ of the liberal-moderate party founded by Cavour), "La Gazzetta del Regno" (published in Turin) "La Gazzetta di Genova", Catholic newspaper "L'Armonia", and the entire collection of "La Gazzetta del Popolo" since its establishment in 1848. There is also a wide range of illustrated current-affairs and cultural magazines dating from the nineteenth century. They range from "Il Teatro Universale," published in the 1830's to "Il Mondo Illustrato," edited in Turin by Giuseppe Pomba in 1846-48, and include political and satirical periodicals with caricatures: "Il Fischietto" (Turin), "Il Lampione" (Florence), "Lo Spirito Folletto" (Milan), "Sior Antonio Rioba" (Venice), "Don Pirlone" (Rome), "Il Pasquino," published in Turin till the 1920's, and more.