Palazzo Madama

Palazzo Madama tickets: entry on your phone, and free for under-18s

The ticket we sell for Palazzo Madama is an entry ticket you buy ahead and keep on your phone, €14.50 for adults and €12 for over-65s and students from 18 to 25. You don’t pick a time, but the museum’s ticket office checks online tickets, so call in at the desk on the way in. The ticket doesn’t include a guided tour or an audio guide, and it can’t be cancelled, so buy it once your plans are fixed.

Under-18s go in free and don’t need a ticket from us, and so do visitors with disabilities and one companion.

From 12 November 2026 to 22 February 2027 the museum’s own Trivulzio Portrait by Antonello da Messina hangs beside his Portrait of an Unknown Sailor from Cefalù, in an exhibition called L’enigma del sorriso, “the enigma of the smile”. It’s included in the ordinary ticket.

Palazzo Madama with Turin’s city passes: included in both

With the Torino+Piemonte Card or the Turin Royal Pass, Palazzo Madama is included and there’s nothing to book.

On Piazza Castello either card also includes the Royal Palace, across the square, so a single square covers two of the card’s entries. Palazzo Madama closes on Tuesdays and the Royal Palace on Wednesdays, so to see both on the same day, go between Thursday and Monday. Which card suits the rest of your trip is set out on the Torino+Piemonte Card page.

What’s in Palazzo Madama: medieval art, Antonello and the tower

Behind the façade, a grand Baroque staircase leads up into the Museum of Ancient Art. The collection starts with medieval art from Piedmont and the Aosta Valley and runs through the Renaissance and the Baroque, and it includes decorative arts such as glass, ceramics, textiles, ivories, enamels and illuminated manuscripts. Antonello da Messina’s Trivulzio Portrait, the painting behind the winter exhibition, belongs to this collection.

The museum also has a Panoramic Tower, reached by lift or stairs, with eight large windows, and a Medieval Botanic Garden. The entrance is step-free, with wheelchairs to borrow, a lift with Braille buttons and a mobile lift for the Sala Staffarda.

Palazzo Madama opening hours and the last tickets at 17:00

At Palazzo Madama the ticket office shuts at 17:00, an hour before the museum, and online tickets are checked there too, so arrive by 17:00 even with ours. The museum itself is open from 10:00 to 18:00 and closes on Tuesdays, and the hours for 1 and 6 January 2027 haven’t been published yet.

The two regents behind Palazzo Madama’s name, and a Roman gate under the castle

In the 1st century BC the site was the Porta Decumana, a gate in the walls of Augusta Taurinorum, the Roman town that became Turin, and two restored towers still recall it. In the 14th century the Savoy-Acaja branch of the family made it a castle, and in the 15th Ludovico of Acaja gave it a square plan with four round towers.

The name came from two regents. Christine of France lived here from 1637, and about 60 years later Marie Jeanne of Savoy, the “Madama Reale”, fixed the name and in 1716 commissioned Filippo Juvarra’s façade, meant to front a new palace that was never built.

The first Senate of the Kingdom of Italy met here, and the royal picture gallery that became the Galleria Sabauda started here too. The civic museum moved here in 1933, the building closed for almost 20 years of restoration from 1987, and it reopened in December 2006. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the other Savoy residences.

Palazzo Madama on Piazza Castello: trams, buses and the walk from the stations

Palazzo Madama stands on Piazza Castello, around 20 minutes on foot from Porta Nuova station straight up Via Roma; from Porta Susa you can walk along Via Garibaldi. Trams and buses 4, 11, 12, 13, 18, 51, 55, 56, 61 and 68 stop nearby, line 13 with a low floor, and the City Sightseeing bus has its terminus here. There’s no car park of its own.