As announced at the end of 2023, the Egyptian Museum of Turin has chosen to celebrate the bicentenary of its foundation – it was 1824 when it opened its doors inside the Palace of the Academy of Sciences, proposing itself as the first museum in the world entirely dedicated to the Nilotic civilization – also with a renovation of the historical spaces, entrusted to the studio Dutch OMA Of Rem Koolhaas.
The renovation project of the Egyptian Museum in Turin
Started in March, the works concern the covering of the internal courtyard (the so-called Egyptian Square) and the philological rearrangement of the Gallery of the Kings, in the name of an increasingly “transparent, permeable and inclusive”, to quote the words of the director Christian Grecoalready a supporter of many appreciated initiatives to open the collections to a transversal public (and now, with his mandate expiring in June 2025, courted by the Archaeological Museum of Alto Adige in Bolzano).
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The new Egyptian Square open to the city
The OMA project, in fact, follows up on a new vision of a museum, more complex and multifaceted: the construction site, financed with 23 million euros, aims as a whole to repurpose the courtyard of the baroque palace of the Collegio dei Nobili to give back to the city a new public space, the creation of an Egyptian garden in the covered courtyard and a new immersive room inside the Museum, the restoration and reorganization of the Temple of Ellesija (the oldest rock temple in Nubia, which arrived in Turin in 1966), which can be accessed directly from the court, and the Gallery of Kings.
Precisely to allow the initial work on the glass and steel roofing of the “new” square, which will become the nerve center of the museum, Since last June 17th the Egyptian Museum of Turin has been closed to the public: a situation that will continue until July 12th, in view of the restoration of the usual opening hours from the following day.
The Egyptian Museum “open for works”. Special visits
But the activities continue for those who want to experience a visit out of the ordinary, thanks to the Walk with the Curator initiative. From June 25th to July 12thIn fact, the Egyptian Museum will “open for works”, allowing a limited number of booked guests to visit the spaces while they change skin, during breaks in the construction site. The closed-door visits will be conducted by the museum curators, daily and divided into small groups of 25 people. One way, explains the management, “to confirm the museum’s special relationship with the public and the territory”. The tour, in Italian only, lasts 90 minutes and can be booked online on the Egyptian Museum website, at a cost of 30 euros per person (the visit is recommended for people aged over 14).
Livia Montagnoli
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