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From darkness to light: the new Gallery of Kings
info@museitorino.it
011 44 06 903
From Monday to Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
The transition from darkness to light, a concept dear to the ancient Egyptians, is the immediately evident stylistic hallmark of the reimagining of the Gallery of Kings, curated by the Egyptologists of the Museum: Johannes Auenmüller, Paolo Del Vesco, Alessandro Girardi, Cédric Gobeil, Federico Poole, and Martina Terzoli. The statues are bathed in natural and artificial light streaming through the room’s windows, while reflective aluminum walls create an even brighter and more ethereal atmosphere, allowing the statues of gods and pharaohs to stand out with solemnity.
The original monumental statuary architecture from the 17th century has been fully revealed by OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture, returning to its origins by highlighting the vaults and tall windows that define the space. This restoration also brought back into view two important inscriptions celebrating the Museum’s founding. Both were commissioned in the late 19th century by Minister Luigi Cibrario: one commemorates Bernardino Drovetti, the French consul who sold the first nucleus of the Museum’s artifacts to Carlo Felice of Savoy, and the other honors Jean-François Champollion, the decipherer of hieroglyphs and father of Egyptology, who was among the first to visit Turin to study the Drovetti collection.
Visiting the new Gallery of Kings is like an ideal journey into an ancient Egyptian temple. The placement of the statues, no longer on pedestals but lowered to the floor, mirrors their original positioning seen in the courtyards of grand temples of ancient Egypt, where deities and pharaohs, while exuding hieratic and authoritative presence, maintained a close connection with worshippers—a face-to-face interaction now made possible between the public and the statues in the Gallery.
This closer proximity allows visitors to appreciate new details of the artifacts that were previously inaccessible, such as the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the upper throne of the statue of Thutmose I or the back of the headdress of King Horemheb. At the center of the first room stands the statue of Ramesses II, around which all the other statues of pharaohs are arranged, presented for the first time in chronological order.
The 21 statues of Sekhmet have also been given an archaeological recontextualization inspired by the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III in Thebes, modern-day Luxor, their site of origin. This arrangement highlights the statues' serial rhythm while revealing, under natural light and up close, the unique details that distinguish each figure: “A monumental granite litany,” as described in the title of one of the most renowned publications on Sekhmet by French Egyptologist Jean Yoyotte.
Intesa Sanpaolo is the main partner of the reinstallation of the Gallery of Kings, with contributions from Alpitour World.
The original monumental statuary architecture from the 17th century has been fully revealed by OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture, returning to its origins by highlighting the vaults and tall windows that define the space. This restoration also brought back into view two important inscriptions celebrating the Museum’s founding. Both were commissioned in the late 19th century by Minister Luigi Cibrario: one commemorates Bernardino Drovetti, the French consul who sold the first nucleus of the Museum’s artifacts to Carlo Felice of Savoy, and the other honors Jean-François Champollion, the decipherer of hieroglyphs and father of Egyptology, who was among the first to visit Turin to study the Drovetti collection.
Visiting the new Gallery of Kings is like an ideal journey into an ancient Egyptian temple. The placement of the statues, no longer on pedestals but lowered to the floor, mirrors their original positioning seen in the courtyards of grand temples of ancient Egypt, where deities and pharaohs, while exuding hieratic and authoritative presence, maintained a close connection with worshippers—a face-to-face interaction now made possible between the public and the statues in the Gallery.
This closer proximity allows visitors to appreciate new details of the artifacts that were previously inaccessible, such as the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the upper throne of the statue of Thutmose I or the back of the headdress of King Horemheb. At the center of the first room stands the statue of Ramesses II, around which all the other statues of pharaohs are arranged, presented for the first time in chronological order.
The 21 statues of Sekhmet have also been given an archaeological recontextualization inspired by the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III in Thebes, modern-day Luxor, their site of origin. This arrangement highlights the statues' serial rhythm while revealing, under natural light and up close, the unique details that distinguish each figure: “A monumental granite litany,” as described in the title of one of the most renowned publications on Sekhmet by French Egyptologist Jean Yoyotte.
Intesa Sanpaolo is the main partner of the reinstallation of the Gallery of Kings, with contributions from Alpitour World.
info@museitorino.it
011 44 06 903
From Monday to Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
