MAO, Turin's Museum of Oriental Art

MAO Torino tickets: the new price, and who goes in free

MAO raised its prices on 23 October 2026, so a full ticket for the permanent collections is now €12 and a reduced one €10; if you’ve seen €10 quoted as the full price, that’s the old one. The reduced ticket is for over-65s and 19- to 25-year-olds, among others, and under-18s go in free. The free first Tuesday of the month is suspended for now.

You can buy a ticket for a set time online, from the Fondazione Torino Musei webshop or from TicketOne, or pay at the desk in cash or by card. Visitors on their own don’t need to book. If you’re riding the City Sightseeing hop-on hop-off bus, its ticket also gets you the reduced price.

MAO is included in the Torino+Piemonte Card

Entry to the permanent collections is included in the Torino+Piemonte Card. MAO doesn’t ask individual visitors to book, so you show the card at the desk, and the temporary exhibitions are priced separately.

Inside MAO: five galleries, from South Asia to Japan

The permanent galleries are on the first floor, one for each part of Asia. One covers South and Southeast Asia, with Gandhara, India and Indochina, and China and Japan have a gallery each. The Himalayas have theirs too, from Ladakh and Tibet to Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan, and the fifth runs west, through the Middle East, Persia and Turkey to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

The 2,300 or so works run from the Neolithic to the early 20th century, and more than 1,400 of them are pre-Islamic finds from the excavations at Seleucia and Coche, in Iraq.

Downstairs, the ground floor has the gardens in the Japanese manner, a room for temporary exhibitions and an auditorium. The terrace has been open to visitors since 2023, and MAO also runs guided visits for individual visitors at set times, which it lists on its home page.

Three exhibitions opened this autumn, each with its own ticket: Made in China and Contemporary Expressions #4, until 31 January 2027, and Song Dong. Soul Out, until 27 June 2027.

MAO opening hours: late on Thursdays, closed on Mondays

Palazzo Mazzonis: a noble house, a textile factory and a courthouse

The palace is first recorded in 1587, as the home of the Solaro della Chiusa and then the Solaro della Margarita families, and it was renovated in 1723. In 1879 it was sold to Paolo Mazzonis, a textile industrialist, who gave it his name, and for about a century it worked as a textile factory.

The city bought it in 1980 and, after a restoration, used it as a courthouse; the big terrorism trials of the “years of lead” were held here. More work followed from 2004 to 2008, and in December 2008 the palace opened as MAO, laid out by the architect Andrea Bruno. The galleries were rearranged in the spring of 2015.

MAO on Via San Domenico: on foot from the stations, buses and parking

MAO is at Via San Domenico 11, a 1.3 km walk from Porta Susa station and 1.8 km from Porta Nuova. From Porta Susa the Star 2 bus goes there, and from Porta Nuova buses 52 or 11 or tram 4. The streets around it are a limited-traffic zone, so if you drive, use the underground car parks in Piazza Castello, Piazza Emanuele Filiberto or Santo Stefano, or the garage in Piazza Albarello.

The Shroud Museum is on the same street, at number 28, and opens at 15:00, so it follows a morning here.