Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum)

The Museo Egizio occupies the Palazzo dell'Accademia delle Scienze on Via Accademia delle Scienze in Turin's Centro Storico, in Piedmont, northern Italy. Founded in 1824 around the collection of Bernardino Drovetti, it is regarded as the oldest museum in the world devoted entirely to Egyptian civilisation, and its holdings are often described as the largest outside Cairo. A major redesign completed in 2015 reorganised the galleries chronologically, and visitors now move through the building from the Predynastic period up to Roman-era Egypt, with the lower floors presenting the earliest material and the upper floors the later periods. Highlights include the Gallery of the Kings, a dramatically lit hall of colossal statues of pharaohs, among them the black granodiorite statue of Ramses II, and the Tomb of Kha and Merit, a nearly intact Eighteenth Dynasty burial from Deir el-Medina with its furniture, food offerings and textiles. The museum also holds the Turin King List papyrus, the extensive papyrus collection of Deir el-Medina, mummies, sarcophagi and the rock-cut Temple of Ellesiya from Nubia. Visitors typically allow between two and a half and four hours, and the galleries are best approached in chronological order, starting at the lower level. Labels are in Italian and English, and audio guides and guided tours are available. The busiest periods are weekday midday hours, rainy afternoons and school-group mornings during the academic year; arriving at opening or in the last two hours before closing generally gives quieter rooms and clearer views of the display cases. The Gallery of the Kings rewards a slow second pass once crowds thin, and the statues photograph best from the end of the hall looking along the line of figures. The museum sits about ten minutes on foot from Porta Nuova station and is close to Piazza Castello, which makes it easy to combine with the Musei Reali or the Duomo in a single day of sightseeing in central Turin.