A new data center in Piedmont, northwest Italy, could become the “largest” in the country, a local councillor has said.

The four-building facility, planned in the former Industria Libraria Tipografica Editrice (ILTE) industrial complex in Moncalieri, would sit on an area of approximately 2.9 million sq ft (270,000 sqm) and have a total planned electrical capacity of 576MW.

The company behind the project has submitted a plan with its scope and characteristics, Torino Sud reported.

Piedmont is preparing a law to regulate data center infrastructure development in the region.

Councilor Valentina Cera said the project, which “would likely become the largest facility in Italy," was made public on 17 September.

“The succession of new, ever-larger projects makes the adoption of a clear, uniform, and preventive regional regulatory framework urgent and unavoidable,” Cera said. “The absence of such regulations creates difficulties for individual municipalities and local communities.

“Moreover, the need for regional legislation had been identified by the Regional Council [of Piedmont] as one of its regulatory objectives for 2026. We would therefore like to know the current status of the approval process for the regional bill, which is now urgent."

The data center is planned on the former site of the ILTE, a major Italian printing and publishing company founded in Turin in 1947, which closed in 2016.

In 2023, the ILTE building was listed for sale at €4 million ($4.5m), according to property portal Idealista.

Enrico Bussalino, regional councilor and assessor for the Piedmont Region, said that a public consultation has been launched to gather comments, contributions, and proposals on the project.

“The aim is to launch a participatory process based on transparency and dialog with the local community,” Bussalino said. “Contributions already received are currently being reviewed by the technical departments for the necessary assessments.

“Once this preliminary review is complete, the department will initiate the procedure to draft a new law.”

Piedmont’s neighboring region of Lombardy, which has become a target for data center development in Italy, recently passed Regional Law No.11/2026, the country’s first regulatory framework for the approval of data centers.

The law is intended to promote the sustainability of new developments and their construction on brownfield sites, among other measures.

Learn more about the data center market in Italy and Southern Europe, and meet with other executives and experts from the region at the DCN Milan event next year