Galleria Sabauda and Royal Armoury: tickets, highlights and tips

Two museums, one ticket

The Galleria Sabauda and the Royal Armoury are not stand-alone attractions: they are part of the Musei Reali, the complex built around the Royal Palace on Piazza Castello. You enter at Piazzetta Reale 1, and the standard ticket, €15 according to the museum website, opens both, along with the royal apartments, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud and the Museum of Antiquities.

The Galleria Sabauda fills the Manica Nuova wing of the Royal Palace, while the Armoury is on the main floor, in the Beaumont Gallery, along the route through the apartments. In practice almost everyone visits them the same morning: palace and Armoury first, then the picture gallery.

The open route can vary with rehangings and temporary exhibitions, which are included in the ticket. If there is a particular work or section you want to see, check on the Musei Reali website that it is open before you go.

Galleria Sabauda: works to look for

Founded as the Savoy family’s picture gallery by King Charles Albert and handed to the state after Italian unification, the Sabauda shows hundreds of paintings from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. It is one of Italy’s richest collections and, unlike the big museums of Florence or Rome, you can enjoy it without crowds.

Flemish painting and the Renaissance

• Jan van Eyck, Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata: a small panel of almost unbelievable precision.
• Hans Memling, Scenes from the Passion of Christ: dozens of episodes in a single view of Jerusalem, painted for the Florentine banker Tommaso Portinari.
• Piero and Antonio del Pollaiolo, Tobias and the Archangel Raphael, plus works by Fra Angelico and Mantegna.
• The section on the Renaissance in Piedmont, with Defendente Ferrari and Gaudenzio Ferrari, little known but surprising.

The seventeenth century and court portraits

• Anthony van Dyck, The Children of Charles I, the most famous portrait in the collection.
• Orazio Gentileschi, Annunciation, and paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi.
• The three large canvases by Paolo Veronese, Francesco Albani’s Elements and works by Guido Reni.
• Guercino, The Return of the Prodigal Son, the Dutch and Flemish paintings collected by Prince Eugene of Savoy-Soissons, and a Rembrandt.

The Gualino collection and views of Turin

On the upper floors you will find the collection of the industrialist Riccardo Gualino, with Botticelli’s Venus, and Bernardo Bellotto’s views of Turin: it is fun to recognise the squares you have just walked through.

Royal Armoury: what to see

The Armoury was created by King Charles Albert and opened in 1837 in the Beaumont Gallery, the long hall Claudio Francesco Beaumont had decorated in the eighteenth century with the story of Aeneas. Its first director, the artillery captain Vittorio Seyssel d’Aix, gathered pieces from the arsenals of Turin and Genoa and from private collections bought on the antiques market.

• Mounted knights: full suits of armour on wooden horses, lined up in pairs facing each other as if for a parade or a tournament. This is the image that stays with you.
• Parade and hunting weapons: swords, crossbows, decorated firearms and chased helmets that were status symbols more than tools of war.
• The Rotunda: added a few years later to a design by Pelagio Palagi, it houses among other things the collection of oriental arms.
• The Coin Room: coins and medals from the royal collections, next to the Armoury.

The collections hold more than 5,000 objects, about 1,700 of them on display. Even people with no interest in weapons are struck by the whole: the frescoed ceiling, the nineteenth-century cases and the rows of knights make this one of the most theatrical rooms in Turin.

Which ticket to choose

To see the Galleria Sabauda and the Armoury, the standard Musei Reali ticket is all you need: €15 according to the museum website, €2 for ages 18 to 25, free for under 18s and for everyone on the first Sunday of the month. You can buy it at the ticket office or on the official website.

If your stay also includes the Egyptian Museum, the Mole or Palazzo Madama, the Torino+Piemonte Card, from €29.90 on Tiqets, includes entry to the Musei Reali and starts to pay off with two or three paid museums.

The Royal Palace guided tour, from €49 on Tiqets, is an extra option, not the way in: it is designed to bring the royal apartments to life. It makes sense on a first visit to Turin if you want a guide for the palace and are happy to explore the Sabauda and the Armoury on your own afterwards. Before booking, check the language, length and spaces included. All the options are compared on our Turin tickets page.

Planning your visit

• Order: the route usually takes you through the palace apartments and the Armoury first, then down to the Galleria Sabauda. If painting is your main interest, go there first while you are still fresh.
• Time: an hour and a half to two hours for the Sabauda, about 45 minutes for the Armoury; with the rest of the Musei Reali, allow three to four hours.
• Hours: Thursday to Tuesday, 9am to 7pm, last entry 6pm; closed on Wednesday.
• Children: the Armoury wins them over; in the Sabauda the museum’s family routes help. Under 18s enter free.
• Accessibility: the exhibition floors have lifts and wheelchairs can be borrowed at the ticket desk; visitors with disabilities and one companion enter free.
• Photos and bags: photos without flash, no tripods or selfie sticks; backpacks and umbrellas go to the cloakroom.

Nearby

When you come out you are in the heart of Baroque Turin. The Royal Gardens, free to enter, are the right place for a break. A few steps away is the cathedral, home of the Holy Shroud, which is not normally on display. On the other side of Piazza Castello, Palazzo Madama rounds off the day with its museum of ancient art and the view from the tower.

If you still have energy, Via Po leads to the Mole Antonelliana in about fifteen minutes. Keep the Egyptian Museum for another half-day, though: after the Sabauda, another big museum is too much. For the rest of your stay, see our page on things to do in Turin.