200 Years of the Museo Egizio
The year 2024 promises to be a year of great change for the Museo Egizio.
The bicentenary of the Museo Egizio’s foundation (1824-2024) marks the beginning of a major transformation process of the Museum's exhibition spaces, accessibility, and use.
Thanks to this extensive renovation, the Museum will increase its display and exhibition areas by more than 1,000 square meters.
We look forward to showing our American Friends the new Museo Egizio!
Here is an overview of the projects that will see in the coming months
Piazza Egizia
A new square in the heart of Turin
A modern space made of steel and glass, capable of welcoming everyone: visitors, passers-by and those who are simply curious. The covered area will dominate the 1,000 square meters of Piazza Egizia, which will house the new cafeteria and all other services, including the ticket office.
The architectural project – created by the Dutch architectural firm OMA – focuses on the re-functioning of the building's courtyard, which will become a new public space on two separate levels.
Piazza Egizia will be accessible to everyone and from here it will be possible to take different routes to discover the Museum. Visitors will be able to walk around the rock-cut chapel of Ellesiya, which will be open and free to all, enjoy the beauty of the Egyptian Gardens, and visit ‘Materials. The Shape of Time’, the new exhibition spaces dedicated to material culture and immerse themselves in the multimedia area with projections to experience the Egyptian landscape.
Egyptian Gardens
Double the amount of greenery
Following on from the first Egyptian-style garden created in 2022 in the Museum's courtyard, which was a reconstruction of an Egyptian pleasure garden from the New Kingdom (ca. 1550–1069 BCE), we decided to double the amount of green space. The current layout will be adapted to the new spaces available. The arrangement of plants will recall those from ancient Egyptian houses with specimens typical of the Nilotic environment such as palms, sycamores and fig trees.
To provide visitors with an even more immersive and tangible experience of ancient Egypt, we are happy to announce the creation of two new Egyptian gardens on the Museum’s rooftop: a funerary garden, associated with the rituals surrounding tombs and funerary customs, and a kitchen garden, linked to daily life, food and diet.
These two gardens, based on existing models and idealised representations, give visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves into the flora of ancient Egypt as the Egyptians intended for both life on earth and in the netherworld.
The rock-cut chapel of Ellesiya
Open and free to all
The gallery housing the rock-cut chapel of Ellesiya will be redesigned and, once open, it will be made accessible free of charge both from the new covered courtyard and from a new access directly connected to the city. This decision is related to the nature of the temple, it was donated by Egypt to the Italian state in 1970 as a form of thanks for Italy’s participation in the UNESCO mission to save the Nubian temples. The temple of Ellesiya is therefore national property and hence a form of cultural heritage that belongs to everyone.
In rethinking the gallery’s display, greater emphasis will be placed on the archaeological context of origin, including the use of modern digital technologies. Using video mapping techniques, the new display will recount the long history of the temple from its construction to its rescue in the 1960s following the construction of the Aswan Dam.
The new Gallery of the Kings
From darkness to light
Immediately in front of the rock-cut chapel of Ellesiya is one of the Museo Egizio’s most iconic galleries: the Gallery of Kings. Being highly aware of the great success of the exhibition designed by Dante Ferretti in 2006, Museum staff and curators wanted to propose a new design that reflected the multiple contexts of origin of the statues while also enhancing the architectural style of the building that houses the collection.
The new exhibition design, conceived by architecture firm OMA in collaboration with the Museo Egizio curatorial team, titled ‘From darkness to light’, aims to re-illuminate the spaces and reposition the statues according to how they originally stood in places where they were discovered.
Work has already begun on the gallery's reinstallation, and the impressive statues placed here are now on display in the Museum's atrium, in the same place where they were set up on their very arrival in Turin in 1824.
Multimedia area “Immersive Egypt”
Bringing Egyptian Landscapes to the Museum
The large underground hall will offer an immersive environment that, thanks to scientific research and digital innovation, will reproduce some of the archaeological contexts where the artefacts came from.
The biography of the objects will be enriched with evocative landscapes and detailed images to provide a broader and more complete experience about the Museum’s collections and ancient Egypt.
The project, which is the first of its kind to combine archaeology, immersiveness and objects on display will be divided into two sections. The first section will feature a prevalence of artefacts displayed in conjunction with LED screens to show the connection between object and original landscape. The second room will present a true immersive experience with the walls being completely covered with projectors.