MUSEUM OF CINEMA: MUSEUM HISTORY
The Turin Museum of Cinema is the third most popular museum in Turin after the Egyptian Museum and the Palace of Venaria.
The Museum of Cinema is famed for holding one of the most complete collections in the world about film history. The museum got its first start in 1941 when the film historian Maria Adriana Prolo started to collect materials, though the collection did not find a suitable home until 1958. The museum was officially established in a wing of Palazzo Chiablese, and it was only in 2000 that it moved to its current site in the Mole Antonelliana.
Turin Museum of Cinema and Mole Antonelliana
At 167.50 meters, the Mole Antonelliana complex makes the Museum of Cinema the world's tallest. It features an all-glass panoramic that takes visitors up 85 meters in 59 seconds, where they can enjoy an amazing view of the city from the dome's small terrace.
The exhibition in the original museum site in Palazzo Chiablese was created from an exhibition of memorabilia on the ground floor, and another room was set up for screenings and a film and book library were on the upper floor. Exhibitions and film festivals were put on at the Turin Museum of Cinema with themes such as the "Exhibition of Caricature in Photography" in 1960, the "Stereoscopy Exhibition" in 1966, and the "Exhibition of Silent Film Posters" in 1974. The museum site was closed in 1983 due to safety concerns after a fire in Cinema Statuto. When the founder died in 1991, a foundation was established in her name, which, along with other donors, helped the museum grow and move to the new site at Mole Antonelliana.
The Turin Museum of Cinema – Tour route
The tour of the Museum of Cinema covers two floors. On the first floor is the Cinema Archeology section. Archeology here refers to the technologies, historical development, and set and film items used in the past before the days of modern cinema. The floor has eight different rooms where you can see up close the technologies used in the past: shadow puppetry, the apparent movement optics, optical illusions, the stereoscopes, and optical boxes. The first floor is probably the best one for children because all installations can be touched. Digital interaction through TAGs and captions complete the descriptions. In the eight rooms, you'll learn things like the term "Panorama" a vision technology patented in 1787, and about magic lanterns, the forebears of today's beloved animated cartoons. Older kids and adults will enjoy the "thrills and chills" of the Phantasmagoria show. On the first floor, you can also see the true forebears of cinematography: the praxinoscope, the chronophotograph, and the kinematoscope. Continuing to Mole Antonelliana's center, you'll find a huge room called the "Aula del Tempio" where an enormous spiral staircase dominates the scene, on the sides of which are numerous temporary exhibitions that will give you the feeling of traveling back in time. There is a glass elevator wrapped around the staircase that goes up to the top of the dome of the Mole Antonelliana. Or keeping your feet firmly planted on the ground, you can get comfortable in one of the many armchairs in the Aula del Tempio and watch a variety of silent films projected on the many screens on the wall, interspersed by videos of the greatest dance scenes in cinema history. At the end of the movie viewing (about 20 minutes each), the screening is paused for the Son et Lumière light and sound show on the background of the dome! In the side niches of the enormous room, you can see sets that evoke all kinds of film genres (western, horror, adventure, science fiction, etc.)
An elevator takes you to the upper floor, whose theme is a cinema "time machine" which illustrates the steps involved in making a film, starting from production to direction, actors, costumes, photography, sketches, music, special effects, and lighting. On the upper floor, called the "Poster Gallery," see the greatest film posters that have immortalized the faces of so many actors in the history of film. A tip for the brave: don't miss going up to the dome on the panoramic elevator! You'll get a sweeping view of all of Turin and the beautiful Alpine landscape around the city.
