February 2006. The Turin Olympic Village is brand new. Athletes move in and out of the newly completed buildings, the rooms still untouched, the cafeterias running at full capacity. Everything is temporary, but designed to appear permanent. In a few weeks, they say, these same apartments will become homes, student residences — a brand-new neighborhood rising from the ashes of Turin’s industrial past.

February 2026. Milan-Cortina has just concluded. The villages are emptying, entrances closing, the cameras turning off, and the facilities nearing the moment when they are meant to begin their second life.

Online, déjà vu.

On Reddit, users begin asking how it ended in Turin in 2006. On Instagram, photos of abandoned facilities, tracks, and locker rooms circulate widely. Creators and urban explorers return to the Olympic Village to see what remains, and YouTube fills with videos that feel like a bitter omen.

In Turin, in the former industrial area of Via Giordano Bruno, the Olympic Village was planned to become a new residential neighborhood immediately after the Games.

After the Olympics ended, however, some of the buildings remained unused or underused. Redevelopment projects slowed down and, between 2013 and 2019, several buildings were occupied by refugees and asylum seekers, turning the former athletes’ housing into one of the largest informal housing occupations in Europe, with more than a thousand people from dozens of countries.

Only in the following years did the definitive reconversions begin. Some structures were transformed into student housing and social housing, entering the city’s residential market — almost two decades later. Others, particularly those tied to sports facilities, remained for years exactly as they appear in the images circulating online today.

In the meantime, Milan promises that this time, at Scalo Porta Romana, it will be different.