Museo Civico d'Arte Antica

The Museo Civico d'Arte Antica is an art museum housed in the Palazzo Madama on Piazza Castello in Turin, Italy. Founded in 1934, it holds a renowned collection spanning medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art, and reopened in 2006 after extensive restorations. The museum serves as a major repository of ancient art in northern Italy, preserving and displaying works that trace the development of European artistic production from the early Middle Ages through the seventeenth century.

The museum's origins lie in two earlier royal institutions: the Pinacoteca Regia and the Galleria Reale, established in Palazzo Madama by King Charles Albert of Savoy in 1832. A Civic Museum had been founded in 1860 following Italian unification, though its collections were moved to Via Gaudenzio Ferrari three years later and augmented through acquisitions from private collectors, closed Savoy residences, and family donations. In 1898 the collections were divided between ancient and modern art. Director Vittorio Viale transferred the ancient art collections to the current Palazzo Madama location in 1934, creating the present museum. The museum reopened to the public in 2006 after years of restoration work. Since 2010 its activities have been documented in the annual journal Palazzo Madama. Studi e notizie. In 2008 the museum's collection of Asian art, including rare Gandhara artifacts from IsMEO excavations at the Butkara Stupa in Pakistan, was transferred to Turin's Museum of Oriental Art.

The museum's holdings comprise more than seventy thousand works distributed across thirty-five rooms on four floors plus a panoramic level. The collection is organized chronologically and by medium: the underground floor contains medieval works; the ground floor is devoted to Gothic and Renaissance painting; the first floor houses Baroque art; and the uppermost floor addresses decorative arts. Beyond paintings and sculptures, the collections encompass illuminated manuscripts, ceramics, porcelains, maiolica, ivories (predominantly of oriental origin), gold and silver works, furniture, and textiles.

The fifteenth-century Torre dei Tesori contains several of the museum's most celebrated works: Antonello da Messina's Trivulzio Portrait, the Turin-Milan Hours (also known as the Très belles Heures de Notre Dame de Jean de Berry), and objects from the cabinet of curiosities of Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy. The Camera delle Guardie displays Baroque paintings by Orazio Gentileschi, including the Assumption and St. Jerome, alongside works by Giovanni Battista Crespi, Giulio Cesare Procaccini, and Francesco Cairo. Other significant holdings include sculptures of the Dead Christ, paintings by Macrino d'Alba, Giacomo Jaquerio, Giovanni Martino Spanzotti, Defendente Ferrari, Antonio Vivarini, Giulio Campi, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Gandolfino da Roreto, Gerolamo Giovenone, and Francesco Hayez, as well as sculptors' and goldsmiths' works from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries and Piedmontese coats of arms.

The Museo Civico d'Arte Antica is located in Palazzo Madama on Piazza Castello in Turin, Italy. It is owned and operated as a civic museum, with its official website at palazzomadamatorino.it. The museum reopened to the public in 2006 and periodically hosts exhibitions and artistic events. Visitors can access the collections across four floors plus a panoramic level, with elevator connections between floors.