Palazzo Carignano

Palazzo Carignano opens four days a week: tickets and guided groups

Palazzo Carignano’s Princes’ Apartments open only from Friday to Monday, and you go round with a guide, in groups of up to 25 that set off at fixed times. Entry is €5, or €2 if you’re 18 to 25, and under-18s go in free. The Torino+Piemonte Card and the Turin Royal Pass both include it.

Without a card, you buy the museum’s own ticket: online at museiitaliani.it, in the Musei Italiani app, or at the ticket office, which takes cash and cards. Booking is recommended rather than required, except on special openings and on the first Sunday of the month.

That first Sunday entry is free and you walk round on your own, but everyone has to book. If you’re coming with a card, book anyway, because the card’s own rules list Palazzo Carignano among the places that need a reservation.

Palazzo Carignano and the Egyptian Museum on one Torino+Piemonte Card

Here a city pass is the only thing we sell that gets you in, and both of Turin’s passes include the entry.

The card pairs well with this street. Palazzo Carignano is at number 5 of Via Accademia delle Scienze and the Egyptian Museum at number 6, and the Torino+Piemonte Card includes both. Mind the days, though: the palace opens only from Friday to Monday, and on Mondays the Egyptian Museum closes at 14:00, so on a Monday see the museum in the morning and the palace after 14:15. The rest of what each card covers is on the Torino+Piemonte Card page.

The Princes’ Apartments: Guarini’s staircase and the gilded rooms

The visit takes you through the Appartamento di Mezzogiorno, the princes’ apartment in the 17th-century part of the palace. You climb Guarini’s staircase and walk through the Sale dorate, the gilded rooms that Stefano Maria Legnani, known as il Legnanino, decorated between the 17th and 18th centuries. The apartments reopened in 2011, and the route keeps growing as research on the rooms goes on.

Until 15 February 2027 the palace also hosts Verdi oltre il sipario, an exhibition on Giuseppe Verdi and how opera was made in modern Italy, open Friday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00 with free entry. The palace has free concerts at 17:00 on 19 November, 17 December and 21 January as well, and for those you need to book.

The Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento, on Italy’s unification, is in the same palace but is a separate museum with its own ticket, 30 rooms and about 2,500 objects.

Palazzo Carignano’s history: Victor Emmanuel II’s birthplace and the 1848 parliament

The palace was built for Prince Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy-Carignano, to a design by Guarino Guarini, a Theatine priest and architect, with work starting in 1679. Its brick façade curves in, out and in again, a rhythm Guarini took from Borromini’s church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome, and it’s described as the only secular building to use it.

Victor Emmanuel II, who became the first king of Italy, was born here in 1820. From 1848 to 1861 the palace housed the Chamber of Deputies of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which met in its elliptical hall in 1848. In 1861 Turin became the first capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and a new wing was built for the Italian Parliament; it was finished in 1871. The palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the other Savoy residences.

Palazzo Carignano by metro and bus, next door to the Egyptian Museum

The palace is at Via Accademia delle Scienze 5, 900 metres on foot from Porta Nuova metro station. Lines 13, 15, 55 and 56 stop at Castello (stop 471) and lines 4, 6, 11, 15, 27, 51, 57 and 58 at Bertola (stop 1642), and there’s paid parking in the streets around. Next door, the Egyptian Museum has guided tours with the entry included, in English or Italian.