Things to do in Turin, Piedmont: The Best Museums

Elena Salamon Arte Moderna is a small art gallery in the city center of Turin, it selects original stamps of the XVIII and XIX century.

The Museo delle Antichità Egizie is the only museum other than the Cairo Museum that is dedicated solely to Egyptian art and culture. Many international scholars, since the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs Jean-François Champollion, who came to Turin in 1824, spend much time pouring over the collections. It was Champollion who famously wrote, “The road to Memphis and Thebes passes through Turin”.The collections that make up today’s Museum, were enlarged by the excavations conducted in Egypt by the Museum’s archaeological mission between 1900 and 1935 (a period when finds were divided between the excavators and Egypt).The Egyptian Museum in Turin has begun 2009 an important project which wants to widen spaces in order to enhance the collections through modern museographical and museological criteria. The Museum will be open all over the period of restoration and the New Egyptian Museum inauguration is scheduled for the year 2015.

The Museum is one of the most important of its kind in the world thanks to it vast collection and the many different scientific and educational activities it carries out. But what makes it truly unique is its special exhibit setup. The museum is located inside the Mole Antonelliana, a bizarre and fascinating monument which is the symbol of the City of Torino. And the various areas inside the Mole Antonelliana were the starting point for the Swiss set designer François Confino who, with talent and imagination, multiplied the museum's itineraries. He created a spectacular presentation that offers visitors continuous and unexpected visual and acoustic stimuli, just like when we watch a film that involves and moves us.

The Academy of Sciences of Turin was founded in 1783, with Royal Patents, by King Vittorio Amedeo III. This act is the culmination of a process that began with the birth, in 1757, a scientific society of a private character, which grew from mathematics, mechanics and physics, initiated by Count Giuseppe Angelo Saluzzo and Giovanni Cigna Louis Lagrange.In 1801 with Napoleon, the Academy of Sciences was reformed and divided into two distinct classes, for the humanistic and the scientific division still in force.Currently the Academy, in addition to domestic scientific meetings held in the month in which the members present the results of their research, organizes conferences, seminars and events, including international, of both a specialist and the general public. Each year awards are also given high-level scientific, national and international.The Academy has a library which was formed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century collecting the best of scientific and humanistic age. Currently, mainly because of the great specialization of the sciences, the library has had a much smaller increase in terms of books, but has been enriched thanks to intensive periodic reports required by our institution with scientific academies and other research institutions and exchanges that are achieved. The library catalog is fully computerized and available on Librinlinea, the bibliographic information and a Loan Service of the Piedmont region.The historical archives of the Academy is one of the most important Piedmontese archives and you will retain documents and records produced by the Academy of activity during two centuries, the original manuscripts of scientific research of men like Louis Lagrange, Giovanni Plana, Amedeo Avogadro and other scientists ; cards belonging to members or as the Count Frederick Sclopis Bernardino Drovetti, the creator of the original nucleus of the rich collection of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, with patents on color plates (over three hundred machines), witnessed the positive contribution that the Academy has given the process of industrialization in the country, from Piedmont took its first steps; remarkable correspondence of importance to the illustrious names of the senders and recipients and for the interest of the topics covered, and parchments from different dates and various subjects.

The MAO - Museum of Oriental Art opens in Turin proposes creative work from different cultures not only to carry out the vocation as a place for conservation and exhibition, but also to induce the visitor to broaden their horizons.The MAO is also proposed as a means of mediation for the visitors generally away from the conceptions and cultural climates in which the works on display are for. The museum aims to inspire visitors in new ways of thinking and representation to full awareness of how precious every expression of human knowledge.