Turin & the Alps - Italy - page 436

The Top Museums
Turin's magnificent Museo Egizio

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(Via Accademia delle Scienze, 6;
% 011-5617776; www.museoegizio.org; € 6.50; Tues-Sun 8:30am-7:30pm) is the
world's largest Egyptian collection outside of Cairo. This was, in fact, the world's
first Egyptian museum, thanks to the Savoys' habit of ardently amassing artifacts
throughout their reign, and the museum continued to mount collecting expedi-
tions throughout the early 20th century. Of the 30,000 pieces on display, some of
the more captivating exhibits are in the first rooms you enter on the ground floor.
These include the 15th-century B . C . Rock Temple of Ellessiya, which the
Egyptian government donated in gratitude for Italian efforts to save monuments
threatened by the Aswan Dam. The two nearby statuary rooms are staggering
both in the size and drama of the objects they house; notable among the objects
are two sphinxes and a massive, richly painted statue of Ramses II. Smaller
objects—mummies, funerary objects, and a papyrus Book of the Dead—fill the
galleries on the next floor. The most enchanting exhibit here is the collection of
everyday paraphernalia, including eating utensils and shriveled foodstuffs, from
the tomb of the 14th-century B . C . architect Khaie and his wife.
The Savoys' other treasure trove, a magnificent collection of European paint-
ings, fills the salons of the Galleria Sabauda

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(Via Accademia delle Scienze,
6; % 011-547440; www.artito.arti.beniculturali.it; € 4; Tues and Fri-Sun
8:30am-2pm, Wed-Thurs 2-7:30pm), upstairs in the same building as the
Egyptian collection. The Savoy's royal taste ran heavily to painters of the Flemish
and Dutch schools, and the works by van Dyck, van Eyck, Rembrandt, and van
der Weyden, among others, comprise one of Italy's largest collections of northern
European paintings. In fact, two of Europe's most prized Flemish masterpieces are
here: Jan van Eyck's Stigmata of St. Francis and Hans Memling's Passion of Christ.
Italian artists, including those from the Piemonte, are also well represented; one
of the first canvases you see upon entering the galleries is the work of a Tuscan,
Fra Angelico's sublime Virgin and Child.
The Mole Antonelliana

(Via Montebello, 20; % 011-8125658; www.
museonazionaledelcinema.org; Tues-Fri and Sun 9am-8pm, Sat 9am-11pm) is by
a long shot Turin's most peculiar building; in fact, it's one of the strangest struc-
tures anywhere. It consists of a squat brick base, a steep conelike roof supporting
several layers of Greek temples piled one atop the other, and a needlelike spire, all
of it rising 166m (552 ft.) above the rooftops of the city center—a height that, at
one time, made the Mole the world's tallest building. Begun in 1863 and designed
as a synagogue, the Mole is now a monument to Italian unification and architec-
tural hubris and, as of 2000, home to the thoroughly fascinating Museo
Nazionale del Cinema (National Film Museum)

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( € 5.20 for just the museum,

€ 6.80 for the museum plus an elevator ride).

Cumulative Ticket
A cumulative ticket to both the Egyptian Museum and the Sabauda Gallery costs € 8.