National Automobile Museum (MAUTO)

About this place

In one gallery an 1893 Benz, the oldest car in the building, stands a short walk from a Formula 1 car, and between them lies a full century of human obsession with speed. Turin's National Automobile Museum does not line up metal the way a motor show does; it tells a social story — how the car redrew cities, carved up the working day, and changed what distance itself means. Few cities have more right to tell that story than Turin, the capital of Italian car-making and home to Fiat since the end of the nineteenth century. The idea dates to 1932, when Cesare Goria Gatti and Roberto Biscaretti di Ruffia — both present at the founding of Fiat — first proposed a museum of the car, and it was Roberto's son Carlo who spent the next quarter-century assembling the collection. The present building, designed by Amedeo Albertini, opened beside the Po in 1960, and in 2011 the whole thing was reimagined: a new architectural skin by Cino Zucchi and an interior staged by Francois Confino, a film set designer rather than a conventional curator — and you can feel it in nearly every room. Around two hundred vehicles from some eighty marques spread over three floors, carrying you from the birth of the automobile to the assembly line that reshaped modern work, and on into design galleries where a body shell reads more as sculpture than as transport. Among the standouts is the 1896 Bernardi, one of the earliest Italian cars, alongside early Fiats, Ferraris and racing machines. The exhibition route is being renewed at the moment and a handful of famous cars are off display into late October, so treat any single vehicle as a bonus rather than a promise. The museum sits south of the historic centre, well outside walking range of the old town, and that is the single most useful thing to know before you go: this is a separate visit on a separate ticket, and it will not fold into a day that already includes the Museo Egizio or the Mole Antonelliana. The easiest approach is metro line 1 to Lingotto, then about ten minutes on foot. The real bonus is that the old Lingotto factory, with its famous rooftop test track — visited today as the Pista 500, on its own ticket through the Pinacoteca Agnelli — is a kilometre away, which turns half a day into one coherent trip through industrial Turin. The honest verdict: with a single day in Turin, the Egyptian Museum comes first, no argument. With two days, with children, or with any interest in design and engineering, this is the best-staged museum in the city after it, and two hours covers it without rushing. Floors are flat and lifts are plentiful, so it is comfortable with a pushchair. Halal options are thin in this particular neighbourhood; head back to the centre to eat.