Overview:

The Egyptian Museum of Turin - Turin In Italy is one of the largest and most important Egyptian museums in the world. It was officially founded in 1824 as a result of a strong desire to explore and document the remains of Ancient Egypt. The museum is located in central Turin, in an Italian baroque palace, the Palazzo dell' Accademia delle Scienze, and houses a vast collection of antiquities gathered from excavations in Egypt between the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is one of Italy’s most important archaeological museums and contains more than 30,000 artifacts, making it one of the largest collections of ancient Egyptian artifacts in the world. The collection includes objects from all periods of Ancient Egypt – from the Predynastic Period to the Roman Imperial period – and covers a broad range of topics, including funerary art, architecture, and ancient technology. It is one of the most beautiful monuments in Italy
Prominent Features:

1. The largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Egypt, with an exhaustive catalog of over 40,000 objects including unique ancient artifacts and works of art. 2. Features include art sculptures, reconstructions, murals, frescoes, archaeological artifacts, and funerary objects. 3. Offers educational programs, special exhibitions, conferences, workshops, lectures, and conservation projects. 4. Onsite café and library, special online resources and a calendar of events. 5. Option to borrow objects from the collection and educational kits for loan activities. 6. Operating since 1824, the museum is one of Turin's most popular tourist attractions and enjoys many visitors. 7. Home to important and unique Egyptian treasures, such as the Piedmont Sphinx, a statue of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, and a collection of mummies. You can learn history, culture, and heritage through these magnificent monuments in Italy.

History:

The Egyptian Museum of Turin or Museo Egizio di Torino is an archaeological museum in Turin, northern Italy, specialising in Egyptian archaeology and related antiquities. It houses the world's largest collection of Egyptian antiquities outside of Egypt, with nearly 30,000 artifacts on display, though visited by fewer than 200,000 people a year. It was founded in 1824 and is the oldest museum in Italy specialising in such artefacts. The idea for the museum was conceived by Bernardino Drovetti, an Italian diplomat and antiquities collector who, after five years as Consul General of Egypt, returned to Turin in 1823. Drovetti started assembling materials to create a major Egyptian museum. Initially Drovetti’s collections was kept in an apartment in the Via San Tommaso, near Piazza Castello, and opened to the public in 1824. A few months later, the collections were moved to a part of the nearby Palazzo Accorsi. In 1833 and 1834, Francois Auguste Ferdinand Mariette, a French Egyptologist and Director of the Louvre Egyptology collections, was called to Turin by King Charles Albert of Sardinia where he was asked to inventory Drovetti’s collections and oversee the museum’s reorganisation. Mariette created a trading system, whereby the museum would acquire objects from dealers around the world in exchange for publication credits in the Turin museum’s publications. This system was used until the 1980s. In the 1850s the collections were moved to the current premises, a neoclassical building in the heart of Turin. This building, known as the Palazzo dell'Accademia delle Scienze (Palace of the Academy of Sciences), was built in the 18th century and publicly opened in 1841. In the following years the museum was enriched with new discoveries, such as the mummy of Couillaud Antoine-Laurent, a Napoleonic general, and the temple of Debod, brought from Egypt. In the early 20th century, the collection was further expanded by the acquisition of important objects inherited by archeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli, immediately prior to his death. Today, the Egyptian Museum of Turin boasts the world's most important collection of sculpture, jewelry, funerary objects, and papyrus from the ancient Egyptian civilization. It is the largest museum outside of Egypt with over 30,000 items, almost a third of which are on display. Notable objects include the wooden statue of Akh-en-Aten, statues of gods, Ramesses II statues, animal mummies, jewellery and papyri. In 2021 it was announced that the museum would receive a €6 million grant from the Italian government to expand and become a world-leading institute of Egyptian studies. The museum is open to the public from Tuesday through Sunday. Visit one of the famous monuments of Italy with your friends and family.

Interesting facts:

1. The Egyptian Museum of Turin was founded in 1824 and is the oldest Egyptian museum in the world. 2. It is home to more than 30,000 artifacts from Ancient Egypt, including the Tomb of Kha and Meryt, one of the most complete tombs ever found. 3. In addition to its permanent collection, the museum also hosts a number of special exhibitions throughout the year. 4. It is located in the historic Palazzo dell'Accademia delle Scienze (Academy of Sciences) in the heart of Turin. 5. The museum's main exhibit is the collection of mummies and sarcophagi acquired from the Catacomb of Santa Priscilla in Rome. 6. Other notable exhibits include a replica of the Narmer Palette, an early example of the hieroglyphic system, and the coffin of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, one of the first female rulers of Egypt. 7. The museum also houses a library filled with books on Ancient Egypt, as well as a number of interactive activities, such as replicas of ancient tombs and models of how to build a pyramid. One of the historical monuments of Italy, it tells the story of a bygone era