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The most beautiful museums in Turin

March 22, 2024 Modified date: October 30, 2024

Turin is an extraordinary city in Northern Italy that boasts a vast and precious artistic and cultural heritage. Its riches include some of the most important monuments in Italy, as well as over 40 museums scattered throughout the city. This travel guide will introduce you to the most beautiful museums in Turin, which are a must-visit during your stay in the city.

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9 most beautiful museums in Turin

Turin is one of the main cultural centers in Italy and Europe. Indeed, the city has a multitude of attractions and monuments of various styles. In Turin, one can admire palaces and castles, churches and royal palaces, museums and galleries. The long history of the city, which was the residence of the Kings of Italy, the Savoys, has seen the birth of many artistic movements.

While the legacy of the past has established Turin as one of the most renowned cities for Italian cultural heritage, the city never ceases to look forward. In fact, in the capital of the Piedmont region, we can visit museums dedicated to ancient art and contemporary sectors such as cinema and the automobile.

The Kings of Italy, the Savoy family, played a leading role in the cultural history of Turin. The Savoys invited painters, writers, poets, and architects to their court. All, with their works, shaped the identity of the future capital of the Kingdom of Italy. Unsurprisingly, the city of Turin links with some of the protagonists of the Italian cultural scene, including Filippo Juvarra, Vittorio Alfieri, Cesare Pavese, and Luigi Einaudi. Now, let’s take a look at some of Turin’s most stunning museums.

Egyptian Museum

The most visited museum in Turin is undoubtedly the Egyptian Museum. It stands out as a masterpiece within the Italian cultural landscape. Dedicated exclusively to the history and culture of Egypt, it was inaugurated in 1824. Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy purchased the Mensa isiaca, a bronze tablet, in 1626, which represents the historical core of the collection.

The Egyptian Museum of Turin is located in the historic Palazzo of the Academy of Sciences. The collections allow a journey through time over more than 4,000 years of history. The museum’s collections include 40,000 archaeological finds, all dated from the Paleolithic to the Coptic era. The museum displays 3,300 of these finds along the visit path, which spans 15 rooms and 4 floors of the building. An additional 11,000 finds can be found in the deposits of the “Galleries of Material Culture.”

The museum’s exceptional collections gather statues, papyri (there are 700 complete ones), sarcophagi, and everyday objects. In addition, the museum houses 300 human and animal mummies. In recent years, the botanical garden has been opened to the public to admire the flora of ancient Egypt.

The Egyptian Museum of Turin is located at Via Accademia delle Scienze 6.

Royal Museums

The Royal Museums are a complex of exceptional cultural importance. They include the Royal Palace, the Royal Gardens, the Royal Library, the Royal Armory, the Sabauda Gallery, the Museum of Antiquities, Chiablese Palace, and the Chapel of the Holy Shroud. Therefore, the Savoy family has contributed to the formation of over 50,000 sq m of exhibitions between the 16th and 20th centuries. The collections include more than 8,000 paintings and drawings and 200,000 volumes. The collections also include 50,000 archaeological finds, furniture, coins, medals, porcelain, weapons and armor, tapestries, and precious objects.

The Royal Palace is the most important of the Savoy residences, and one can admire the luxurious apartments of the rulers. The Library has an immense heritage with over 200,000 books, ancient papers, engravings, and illuminated manuscripts. The armory includes one of the oldest and most articulated collections of weapons and armor in the world. In fact, it is a UNESCO heritage site.

The Sabauda Gallery houses more than 700 paintings from the Savoys’ collections. It includes works ranging from the 13th to the 20th century. Among the most precious works of art are those by Italian and European painters Beato Angelico, Mantegna, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Brueghel. The Museum of Antiquities includes three sections: the Archaeological Gallery, Archaeology in Turin, and the Piedmont Territory Pavilion. The Chapel of the Holy Shroud preserves the famous linen cloth bearing the image of Christ. The Savoys owned the relic from 1453.

The Royal Museums are located in Piazzetta Reale 1.

National Cinema Museum

The National Cinema Museum is one of most beautiful museums in Turin, located inside the city’s famed Mole Antonelliana monument. The visit path occupies several floors and tells the history of cinema. Visitors can admire scenographies, projections, photographs, posters, vintage objects, and sets of famous films.

The Temple Hall includes spaces dedicated to various film genres and the statue of the god Moloch that appeared in the 1914 film “Cabiria.” From here starts the helical ramp that reproduces the shape of an unwound film and leads to a dome from which one can admire the hall itself. The Cinema Machine illustrates the various phases of making a film. Finally, the Poster Gallery retraces the history of cinema and the evolution over time of graphics and poster art.

The National Cinema Museum is located at Via Montebello 20.

National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento

The Palazzo Carignano hosts the Museum of the Italian Risorgimento, which displays objects, relics, and memorabilia related to the historical period that led to the unification of Italy. This museum is the largest, oldest, and most important of its kind. The collections include weapons, uniforms, documents, and paintings. Only 2,600 of the collections’ over 53,000 relics are on display.

The National Museum of Italian Risorgimento also includes two parliamentary chambers. The Subalpine Parliament used the Chamber of Deputies from 1848 to 1860. It still retains the original furnishings and the benches of some of the most important politicians of the nation, such as Camillo Benso Count of Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi. The second chamber is the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament. However, the establishment of Florence as Italy’s capital prevented its use.

The National Museum of the Italian Risorgimento is located at Via Accademia delle Scienze 5.

MAUTO Automobile Museum

Turin, the Italian birthplace of the car, is home to MAUTO, a thematic museum that stands as one of the most significant and oldest in its genre worldwide. Indeed, the Automobile Club of Turin founded the museum in 1932. However, the museum only opened to the public in 1960. Today, the visit path spans 20,000 square meters and showcases 150 cars. Another 60 cars are located in the “Open Garage,” which is only available by reservation.

A visit to MAUTO allows you to learn about the history of the car and its transformations from a simple means of transportation to a status symbol. The museum also has a Documentation Center that collects original documents related to the world of automobiles. Furthermore, the Library preserves 9,000 monographs, and the Periodicals section houses industry magazines in all the languages of the world.

MAUTO Automobile Museum is located at Corso Unità d’Italia 40.

Museum of Ancient Art

The Museum of Ancient Art is one of the most beautiful museums in Turin. It is located in the magnificent Madama Palace, which complex is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Italy. Four floors and 35 rooms articulate the exhibition path. The collections contain notable works of medieval, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque art, as well as examples of decorative arts.

Consequently, the heritage encompasses over 7,000 canvases, sculptures, ceramics, porcelains, majolicas, ivories, golds, silvers, furnishings, and textiles. The Tower of Treasures houses the main attractions. Here, beyond the important goods of world art, it is also possible to admire objects from the Cabinet of Wonders of Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy.

The Museum of Ancient Art is located in Piazza Castello.

GAM Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art

In Italy, Turin stands out for being the first city to set up a civic collection of modern art. Indeed, it dates back to 1895, although the collection found its definitive location in the current building only in 1959. GAM Turin exhibits works of art dating back to the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection comprises a total of 45,000 assets, which include paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, drawings, engravings, films, and videos by artists. The Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art of Turin hosts works by the most important Italian and foreign artists: Klee, Picasso, Ernst, and Warhol.

GAM Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art is located at Via Magenta 31.

Agnelli Art Gallery

The Agnelli Art Gallery occupies the top floor of the Lingotto. The latter is a complex of buildings in the Turin district of Nizza Millefonti and the headquarters of the FIAT automotive factory. The gallery exhibits works from the private collection of the couple of entrepreneurs Gianni and Marella Agnelli. It occupies the Jewel Box of the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano. It has a surface area of 450 square meters, is supported by a steel block, and is elevated 112 feet from the test track on the roof of the FIAT plant.

The museum shows significant pictorial works by influential artists ranging from the 18th to the 20th century. Among them, we remember the famous views of Venice by Canaletto, two sculptures by Antonio Canova, some works by Renoir, Manet, and Picasso, in addition to works by artists of the Italian Futurism movement.

The Agnelli Art Gallery is located at Lingotto Via Nizza 230/103.

Valentino Village

The Valentino Village, or Medieval Castle of Turin, is located within the Valentino Park. It represents the faithful reconstruction of a characteristic Italian village of the 15th century. Originally, the Valentino Village was born as a pavilion of the General Italian Exhibition of 1884. The intention was to showcase medieval architecture. Instead of demolishment at the end of the exhibition, it underwent maintenance and conversion into a museum.

Today, the Po river borders this 8,500 square meter archaeological-monumental site, which encompasses all the elements of a typical medieval village. Thus, inside we have the battlemented walls, the artisan shops, the hospice for pilgrims, the paper mill, the towers, the access gates, the palaces, the houses, and the gardens. The complex also includes the Medieval Castle. It resembles a replica of various Piedmontese and Aosta Valley castles.

The Valentino Village is located in Viale Virgilio 107, Valentino Park.