The Collegio is named after its founder, Carlo Alberto of Savoy (1798-1849), King of Sardinia between 1831 and 1848. The kingdom had capital at Torino and included Liguria, Piedmont, and Sardinia, as well as Nice and Savoy (map).

A controversial figure, as brave on the battlefield as undecided and shifty in his political actions, Carlo Alberto earned an important role in Italian history by fully committing in the 1840s his kingdom and dynasty to the cause of Italian unification, a most important strategic decision that gave the Risorgimento the needed political and military basis on which to develop and, eventually, succeed. In so doing, Carlo Alberto transformed its kingdom in a constitutional monarchy by granting in 1848 the Statuto Albertino, which later became the constitution of the unified Kingdom of Italy.

• A short biography of Carlo Alberto (from the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911).
• An outline of Risorgimento history and of the Italian wars (from the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911).
• The Statuto Albertino (English translation from H. McBain and L. Rogers “The new constitutions of Europe,” 1922).