Il Turin Archaeological Museum retains the historic name of Museo di Antichità to emphasize the continuity of this historic institution.
Its origins date back to the mid-sixteenth century, with the collections of Duke Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, later increased by Carlo Emanuele I and placed in the gallery specially created to house the ducal collections.
In 1723 Vittorio Amedeo II, King of Sardinia, commissioned the distinguished scholar Scipione Maffei to arrange the collection of inscriptions which, together with the existing antiquities, was set up in the University Palace. During the nineteenth century almost all classical antiquities were transferred to the building of the Academy of Sciences, where in the meantime an important collection of Egyptian artifacts had found a place: thus was born the Royal Museum of Greco-Roman and Egyptian Antiquities.
In 1940, with the definitive separation from the Egyptian Museum, the new Museum of Antiquities was born, which since 1982 has found an independent seat in the nineteenth-century greenhouses of the Royal Palace, where the historical core of the collections is currently housed. The collections of Savoy antiquities, to which other prestigious donations and acquisitions were subsequently added, allow the evolution of collecting taste to be followed and testify to the growing interest in archaeology in Piedmont.
A new pavilion, created in 1998, houses the Piedmont territory section: along the exhibition route unfolds an ideal journey back in time, to meet one after another, as in archaeological excavations, the many surprising testimonies of ancient Piedmont.
The basement of the New Wing of the Royal Palace constitutes an extraordinary connection with the archaeological area of the Roman Theatre and is currently intended to host temporary exhibitions, pending the new rearrangement of the collections and the connection with the Royal Complex.
