Women at the market have been a peculiarity of Turin for centuries, as vendors or buyers, in front of or behind the counter. As early as 1549 Andrea Minucci da Serravalle, archbishop of Zara, described the market in Piazza delle Erbe (current Piazza Palazzo di Città): "It is nice to see, among so many foreign soldiers, the square so full of venal things, where men and women sell and they buy according to their need without a noise in the world".

"Over there the long lines of huddled laundresses form multicolored specks, like the nappies stretched out on the runs along the shore": this is how the animated right bank of the Po is described in Turin, in 1880. At the beginning of the last century the banks of the Turin rivers were populated by dozens and dozens of women whose activities were marked by the noise of the 'ladles' and the soil of the songs.