National Cinema Museum Turin and Mole Antonelliana: tickets and lift

Turin Cinema Museum: how the visit inside the Mole works

The route starts on the Archaeology of Cinema floor, with magic lanterns, shadow theatres and the earliest optical devices, then climbs into the Temple Hall, the vast central void of the Mole where you lie back on red chaise-longues and watch clips projected on giant screens. Around the hall open the themed chapels (horror, western, animation, Italian cinema), and from there the spiral ramp winds up the walls past vintage posters to the top of the exhibition route.

A realistic timing is 2–3 hours for the museum, plus 20–40 minutes for the panoramic lift once you count the boarding queue. Nothing forces a single direction: with little time you can concentrate on the Temple Hall and the chapels and skip the more technical section on the machinery of cinema. On weekends and holiday bridges the ramp gets crowded between 11 am and 4 pm; entering at 9 am or after 5 pm the museum is far calmer.

The entrance is at Via Montebello 20, five minutes on foot from Piazza Castello under the arcades of Via Po. The address is the same for museum and lift, but there are two queues: one for the museum turnstiles, one for boarding the cabin in the Temple Hall. A lift-only ticket still takes you inside the Mole, but not onto the exhibition floors.

Cinema Museum Turin tickets: museum, lift and combined prices

There are three formulas and the names look alike, so read them carefully. The timed museum ticket usually costs €13–16* and covers the whole exhibition route but not the panoramic cabin. The panoramic lift on its own sits around €8–10* and has its own boarding time. The combined museum + lift ticket is the best value for anyone doing both, around €18–22*, but it needs the same lead time as the lift because the cabin slot is the one that sells out first.

On partner sites the formulas change names. On Tiqets the Cinema Museum at the Mole listing starts from about €48*: at that price it is a guided or combined formula, not plain admission, so read the description before comparing it with the basic ticket. On GetYourGuide the product Turin: Cinema Museum and Bus Tour pairs museum entry with one day of hop-on hop-off bus from about €35*: it makes sense if the sightseeing bus was already in your plan, since the bus alone costs €22–28*.

Reductions apply to youths, students and over-65s according to bands the museum updates periodically; the youngest children go free. Exact age bands and the day's full prices should be verified on the museum's official site or at the partner checkout: what we report here are bands observed on the catalogues and checked regularly, and the price at payment always prevails.

The Mole Antonelliana panoramic lift: booking, queues and vertigo

The glass cabin rises through the centre of the Temple Hall with no walls around it, 85 metres in 59 seconds, and stops at the small temple at the base of the spire, where the terrace looks over the hill, the Po and, on clear days, the whole arc of the Alps from Monviso to Monte Rosa. This is why searches for Mole Antonelliana tickets nearly always land here: the view is bought separately from the museum.

Lift slots run on fixed times and on spring and autumn weekends they sell out days ahead, while on weekdays you can often find space the same day. The practical rule: book the cabin first, then fit the museum entry around it. In strong wind or a thunderstorm the ride can be suspended: the museum normally refunds or reschedules, but keep a margin if you have a train to catch from Porta Nuova.

If you suffer from vertigo, know that the cabin is transparent on all sides and the terrace is exposed, although fenced by railings. The museum itself is perfectly enjoyable from the ground: the spiral ramp has a solid parapet, and a chaise-longue in the Temple Hall gives the same upward view of the dome without leaving the floor. For an alternative view of the city there is also the tower of Palazzo Madama, far less crowded.

Torino+Piemonte Card, children, opening hours and closing day

The National Cinema Museum is among the museums included in the Torino+Piemonte Card, which starts from about €29* for one day: with the Cinema Museum, the Egyptian Museum and the Royal Museums in the same stay, the Card pays for itself by the second entry. The panoramic lift is not part of the free entry with the Card: you generally pay a reduced fare at the box office, but conditions change, so verify them on the official site before counting on the saving.

The museum is traditionally closed on Tuesday and open the other days from morning to evening, with a late opening on Saturday: check the official calendar for public holidays and exceptional closures before fixing a slot. With children the route works well from about 5–6 years: the interactive chapels, the chaise-longues and the optical toys of the archaeology section hold attention, while the spiral ramp is long for pushchairs (there is an internal lift for reduced mobility).

The Mole Antonelliana: from unfinished synagogue to symbol of the city of cinema

The Mole was begun in 1863 as the synagogue of Turin's Jewish community, to a design by Alessandro Antonelli, who pushed the building far beyond its budget until the city bought it in 1878; completed in 1889, at 167.5 metres it was for decades the tallest masonry building in Europe. In 1953 a storm brought down the upper part of the spire, rebuilt in 1961 with a metal structure: the star you see today is that one, and the same silhouette ended up on Italy's 2-cent coin.

The National Cinema Museum grew from the collection of Maria Adriana Prolo, open to the public from 1958 at Palazzo Chiablese and moved into the Mole in 2000 with François Confino's theatrical installation. The venue is no accident: Turin was the first capital of Italian cinema, home to the Itala Film and Ambrosio studios and to the epic Cabiria, shot here in 1914. The museum also runs the Torino Film Festival every November, when the Mole hosts screenings and side events.

Combining the Cinema Museum with the rest of a day in Turin

The Mole sits halfway between Piazza Castello and the Po, so it fits neatly after a morning at the Royal Museums or the Egyptian Museum and before the walk under the Via Po arcades to Piazza Vittorio Veneto. In our one-day itinerary we place it in the early afternoon, with the lift booked for around 5 pm when the light on the Alps is best and the ramp empties.

When to skip it: if you have already seen the city from above at Monte dei Cappuccini (free, ten minutes across the Vittorio Emanuele I bridge) and cinema does not interest you, the museum can give way to a walking tour of the centre. If what draws you is the illuminated Mole, Mario Merz's Fibonacci sequence on the dome is only visible from outside, ideally on a night tour, without paying for entry.

Platforms and how we pick tickets for the Cinema Museum and Mole

For plain admission and the combined museum + lift ticket we look at Tiqets first, which shows timed slots with instant confirmation and also carries the Torino+Piemonte Card; for guided formulas or the bus combo we give priority to GetYourGuide, which offers free cancellation up to 24 hours before on most products; Headout remains the fallback when the other two have no space on the date you need. Prices marked * are bands observed on partner catalogues and checked regularly: the checkout price always prevails, and the museum's own box office remains a valid alternative as long as the slot has not sold out.