Description
The National Museum of Cinema fills the inside of the Mole Antonelliana, in Turin, and tells the story of cinema from its origins to today along a spiral route that climbs toward the dome. This is no museum of display cases: you look, you try things out, and you lie down.
It is a visit for everyone, even if you are not a film buff. Sets, screenings and play of light, a design by the Swiss set designer François Confino, make it easy to see how a film is born and why cinema enchants us.
You begin with the Archaeology of Cinema: shadow theaters, optical boxes and magic lanterns, to try with your own hands, show what came before films. Eight themed areas explain the optical shows that prepared the birth of cinema.
The spectacular heart is the Temple Hall, under the dome: here you watch the screenings stretched out on chaise longues, surrounded by areas devoted to the great film genres, a corner on Turin as the "city of cinema" and one on Cabiria, a masterpiece of Italian silent film.
From the Hall starts the helical ramp, which climbs toward the dome, unrolling like a reel of film: it hosts the temporary exhibitions, and from above you look down at the Hall beneath you. Along the climb is The Cinema Machine, which shows studios, directing, screenwriting, the star system, costumes and sets.
At the top you reach the Poster Gallery, with posters from Italian and international cinema and the evolution of advertising graphics.
It all began in 1941 with a stubborn woman, the Piedmontese scholar Maria Adriana Prolo. She wanted a museum of Italian cinema and set about collecting memorabilia, helped by pioneers such as Giovanni Pastrone, the director of Cabiria.
The first storeroom was in fact a room of the Mole. But in 1953 a tornado damaged the building and the dream of settling there faded. The museum opened in Palazzo Chiablese in 1958, closed for safety reasons in 1983 and survived in the small spaces of the Cinema Massimo.
Prolo died in 1991, without seeing the permanent home. On July 19, 2000, the museum was inaugurated in the Mole: in five and a half years it passed two million visitors.
Don't miss
• The Temple Hall.
• The helical ramp.
• The Archaeology of Cinema.
• The Poster Gallery.
Did you know?
• In 2024 the Video Game Zone opened here, one of the first spaces in the world devoted to video games inside a museum.
• The 2004 film "Dopo mezzanotte" by Davide Ferrario is set inside the museum.
It is a visit for everyone, even if you are not a film buff. Sets, screenings and play of light, a design by the Swiss set designer François Confino, make it easy to see how a film is born and why cinema enchants us.
You begin with the Archaeology of Cinema: shadow theaters, optical boxes and magic lanterns, to try with your own hands, show what came before films. Eight themed areas explain the optical shows that prepared the birth of cinema.
The spectacular heart is the Temple Hall, under the dome: here you watch the screenings stretched out on chaise longues, surrounded by areas devoted to the great film genres, a corner on Turin as the "city of cinema" and one on Cabiria, a masterpiece of Italian silent film.
From the Hall starts the helical ramp, which climbs toward the dome, unrolling like a reel of film: it hosts the temporary exhibitions, and from above you look down at the Hall beneath you. Along the climb is The Cinema Machine, which shows studios, directing, screenwriting, the star system, costumes and sets.
At the top you reach the Poster Gallery, with posters from Italian and international cinema and the evolution of advertising graphics.
It all began in 1941 with a stubborn woman, the Piedmontese scholar Maria Adriana Prolo. She wanted a museum of Italian cinema and set about collecting memorabilia, helped by pioneers such as Giovanni Pastrone, the director of Cabiria.
The first storeroom was in fact a room of the Mole. But in 1953 a tornado damaged the building and the dream of settling there faded. The museum opened in Palazzo Chiablese in 1958, closed for safety reasons in 1983 and survived in the small spaces of the Cinema Massimo.
Prolo died in 1991, without seeing the permanent home. On July 19, 2000, the museum was inaugurated in the Mole: in five and a half years it passed two million visitors.
Don't miss
• The Temple Hall.
• The helical ramp.
• The Archaeology of Cinema.
• The Poster Gallery.
Did you know?
• In 2024 the Video Game Zone opened here, one of the first spaces in the world devoted to video games inside a museum.
• The 2004 film "Dopo mezzanotte" by Davide Ferrario is set inside the museum.