This article seeks to reconstruct the institutional history of the Waldensian churches in the Piedmont during the nineteenth century. This period saw the development of an ecclesiological structure that was in permanent tension between congregationalism, presbyterianism, and episcopalism due to the confrontation and conflict between competing theological positions, the pressures from international Protestantism, personal goals, and the wishes, needs, and fears of the old mountain parishes and those of the new community in a unifying Italy. In particular, the evolving political situation on the Italian peninsula constituted a constant point of reference, sometimes even a model, for imagining the transformation of the ecclesiastical structure and of the goals of religious politics to be pursued.