Pinacoteca Agnelli and the Pista 500

About this place

On the roof of the Lingotto factory, where new Fiats were once tested on a track suspended five storeys above the ground, Renzo Piano set down a box of glass and steel he called the scrigno, the jewel box. Inside are just twenty-five works, twenty-three paintings and two sculptures, the distilled taste of Giovanni and Marella Agnelli: six views of Venice by Canaletto, two of Dresden by Bernardo Bellotto, seven Matisses with no rival as a group anywhere in Italy, two Picassos from the blue and cubist periods, a Renoir and a Manet, a Balla on the speed of the motor car, and two plaster Canovas. It is tiny as museums go, and there is not one filler piece in it. The truth, though, is that the best part of the visit is not inside the jewel box but around it. The test track itself, more than a kilometre of banked asphalt, has since 2021 been a hanging garden called the Pista 500: twenty-eight green islands, walking paths and some forty thousand plants laid across a factory roof. You walk the surface that finished cars were driven onto straight off the line, with the whole of Turin below you and the arc of the Alps behind it on a clear day. Anyone who has seen the original 1969 film The Italian Job will recognise the place instantly. The full ticket is about 12 EUR and covers the collection, the temporary shows and the rooftop track, with the Casa 500 space on the history of the little car up there too; a gallery-only ticket at about 10 EUR misses the point, since the roof is the real reason to come, while a roof-only ticket is usually sold at around 4 EUR if the paintings do not tempt you. Under-12s go free, and Torino+Piemonte cardholders enter free. It opens Tuesday to Sunday and closes on Mondays, with no compulsory booking and no guided tour. It sits in Lingotto, south of the centre, on its own metro stop, well off the downtown museum trail: this is a standalone outing with a ticket entirely separate from the Museo Egizio, the Musei Reali or the Mole Antonelliana. Honestly: if Turin is a two-day stop between Milan and the lakes, the Museo Egizio and the Mole should come first, and comfortably. But if you have a third day, or you are travelling with children who have had enough of galleries, or you care about architecture and cars, the Pista 500 is one of the strangest and most enjoyable things in northern Italy. The Lingotto shopping centre with its cafes and restaurants is directly beneath you, which turns the whole thing into an easy half day with no long walk and no stairs.