Mole Antonelliana and the Cinema Museum

Two tickets at the Mole: the National Museum of Cinema and the lift

The Mole has two tickets, and it’s worth knowing that before you book: one for the National Museum of Cinema and one for the panoramic lift to the terrace. You don’t have to book the museum, but it strongly recommends doing so, above all on holidays, and its ticket covers whatever temporary exhibitions are on.

The lift ticket is €9, or €7 for anyone aged 6 to 26, and under-6s ride free. If the lift looks full for your date, more tickets go online the day before, and the queue outside can be closed before the end of the day.

The Mole Antonelliana on the Torino+Piemonte Card: the museum is included

With the Torino+Piemonte Card the National Museum of Cinema is included, and for the lift you pay the reduced €7. On the 24-hour card the museum takes one of your three included entries, which leaves two for, say, the Egyptian Museum and the Royal Palace.

The Turin Royal Pass doesn’t include the museum: it gives a reduced museum ticket and the same €7 lift. Neither card covers the climb to the dome on foot.

Cinema Museum tickets with the hop-on hop-off bus or a guide

Without a card, our combo, from €38, pairs skip-the-line entry to the museum with 24 hours on all three lines of the City Sightseeing hop-on hop-off bus, the red, the blue and the green. It doesn’t cover the lift or a guided tour of the museum, and you can cancel it up to 72 hours before the day.

For a guide there’s a two-hour tour in a small group, in Italian only, at €98.50 for anyone 13 or over, with under-4s free. It includes entry to the museum, but the lift isn’t in its list of what’s included, so count on buying that yourself.

Inside the National Museum of Cinema, level by level

You come in at street level, where the ticket desk and the shop are, and the museum climbs from there, numbering its levels +5, +10, +15 and +18. Level +5 is the Archaeology of Cinema, eight areas of optical illusions. At +10 you reach the Temple Hall, the tall space under the dome, ringed by chapels given to film genres, with a section on Turin as a city of cinema, CineVR, the virtual reality room, and a video game area.

From the Temple Hall a spiral ramp winds up into the dome, lined with the temporary exhibitions; you go up it on foot or in a wheelchair, not by lift. Higher still, level +15 holds The Cinema Machine and +18 the Poster Gallery.

The museum puts a visit at an hour and a half to two hours. Until 8 December 2026 access to some rooms is restricted while a new exhibition goes up.

The audio guide, in Italian, English and French, is free and plays on your phone from a QR code. Photos and video for personal use are fine, without flash on level +5, and backpacks and large bags go in the cloakroom. There’s no café, only vending machines on the ground floor.

The Mole’s panoramic lift and the walk up into the dome

The lift is transparent and takes 59 seconds to reach the terrace of the Tempietto, the little temple near the top, 85 metres up. It has run since 1961 and was renewed in 1999. It keeps the museum’s hours, and the last trip down leaves 10 minutes before closing.

At weekends you can also go up on foot, on a guided climb into the dome, €15, on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:20. Under-6s can’t go, the route can be shortened in bad weather, and the museum advises against it for anyone with reduced mobility, claustrophobia or a heart condition. There’s a supervised climb on weekday afternoons too, but it isn’t running at the moment.

Mole Antonelliana opening hours: closed on Tuesdays

Outside the holidays the museum and the lift open from 9:00 to 19:00 and close on Tuesdays, and tickets go on sale until an hour before closing. Around Christmas the hours change almost day by day.

The Mole Antonelliana’s story: a synagogue that grew into a 167-metre tower

The architect Alessandro Antonelli designed the Mole in 1862 as a synagogue for Turin’s Jewish community. The community gave up the project in 1876 and the city took it over, and by 1906 the tower had reached its present height of 167 metres, then the tallest masonry building in Europe.

The top has changed more than once. A storm on 11 August 1904 brought down the winged figure on the spire and a star replaced it, and when that star fell in 1953, the one you see now, with 12 points, went up. You can find the Mole on the back of Italy’s 2-cent coin.

The cinema museum came much later. The historian Maria Adriana Prolo started its collection, and the museum stayed in Palazzo Chiablese until the Mole was renovated for it between 1996 and 1999.

Finding the Mole on Via Montebello, and access inside

The Mole is at Via Montebello 20, and the City Sightseeing bus in our combo stops close by. The museum is accessible, with a free wheelchair to borrow at the desk, lifts set aside for visitors who need them and sensory kits, and visitors with disabilities go in free with one companion. Dogs are allowed on the ground floor only, on a lead and muzzled.