MAUTO - Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile

MAUTO, the National Automobile Museum, is Turin's tribute to the machine that made the city. Born from the collection of Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia and given the national title in the 1930s, the museum presents the history of motoring in a riverside building redesigned for the centenary of Italian unification.

Why it matters

Turin was a major centre of Italian carmaking, home to Fiat, Lancia and many coachbuilders; the National Automobile Museum grew from that industrial context. The museum took formal shape in 1933 through a city resolution, carried by Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia, the aristocrat who conceived it, planned it and assembled its initial collection of early machines. After decades near the old stadium it moved in 1960 to a purpose-built home on Corso Unità d'Italia, funded largely by the manufacturers themselves, and reopened in 2011 after a radical redesign by architect Cino Zucchi and set designer François Confino, in time for the 150th anniversary of Italian unification. Its collection traces motoring from late-nineteenth-century steam carriages to postwar design.

What to notice

The collection ranges from steam carriages and pioneering chassis to Fiat models, racing cars, interwar coachbuilding and postwar Italian design. The building was designed by Amedeo Albertini in 1960 and reworked by Cino Zucchi, with exhibition design by François Confino. In 2025 the permanent exhibition route was renewed.

Context and history

The museum's origin lies in the passion of a single collector. Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia, born in Turin in 1879, had organised a retrospective of veteran vehicles at the 1933 Milan Motor Show, and on 19 July 1933 a resolution of the City of Turin created the Automobile Museum, soon given the title "National." It first opened to the public in 1939 in temporary quarters under the Municipal Stadium stands, showing 73 pieces of the 181-piece collection. In 1955 the city identified land on the left bank of the Po for a permanent home, with automakers — Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lancia among them — financing much of the construction; architect Amedeo Albertini designed the building, completed in 1960, a year after Biscaretti's death. The museum reopened in 2011 after four years of closure and the Zucchi-Confino transformation, and in 2025 completed a further renewal of its permanent route.