A visit to the Turin Motor Museum
Turin is one of Italy's two 'Motor City'. The other is Bologna so it was always a bit of a surprise that Turin had such an awful car museum (Il Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile). Nice building but the displays were terrible. Most of the signage was A4 punched plastic sleeves held up with sellotape. The cars were always fascinating but they weren't presented with any passion or care.
In March, finally after 3 years of work, the restored museum was opened to the public. Last week we arranged a visit. The first noticeable thing was that there were people there - visitors! Something the old one never seemed to have. You always waited for someone to say, 'can you have a quick sweep around and lock the door when you leave'. It really was a bit of a grave.
So, others were visiting, this was a good sign.
The entranceway is now huge. This is necessary as the space is essential to fit all those people that are queuing, as in true Italian style, there were several members of staff standing around doing nonsense jobs and only one guy selling the tickets.
There were four of us - my son Alex and his friend Franco (both car mad), myself and our friend Andrea, a local man. When we eventually got to buy our tickets the young guy on the cash register was friendly, so that was an improvement. He didn't make us feel like we were annoying him or getting in his way.
The next member of staff was a young man in a suit standing at the electronic turnstiles. We were supposed to put our ticket into the machine and then the flaps open allowing us to enter but they didn't work properly (usually you push the ticket in the machine on these sort of things but it seems this was a barcode reader so he had to stand there all day to tell people that - should have put him on the till - we could have got in quicker and he could have told us that when he sold us the ticket..).
The barrier out of the way we met the next member of staff. Her job was was to tell people to start the navigation of the museum from the top floor.. Urrrmm.. It might sound silly but wouldn't it be better to put her on the till and put a sign with an arrow instead of her? Or send her home, replace her with a sign and lower the ticket price, or buy a proper machine? Anyway, that was not our concern, just another reason to giggle at Italian organisation. Andrea just rolls his eyes and denies being Italian in these instances.
We walked to the top floor (3 floors in all) and started with the classics. It was really hot.. am I moaning too much? The next member of staff I met was a pretty young girl telling me off for touching one of the wheels on a car.. sorry! Franco had to touch everything, pull the door handles and kick the tyres. Not once did he get told off!
Overall the display is a massive improvement. Most of the signs are in English as well as Italian, though there were some annoying inconsistencies with this. Not so bad for us but would be a disappointment for a foreign visitor. Especially in the 'car designers' selection which is very good, but everything was only in Italian.
It took us more than 2 hours to see the whole thing and I would go back again. Alex and Franco were also very happy to see such incredible cars. It's worth a visit!
Turin Motor Car Museum - www.museoauto.it
