Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile
museum in Turin, Italy
The Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile di Torino (English: "National Automobile Museum"), known as MAUTO, is an automobile museum in Turin, Italy, founded by Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia. The museum has a collection of almost 200 cars among eighty automobile brands representing eight countries (Italy, France, Great Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, United States of America, Poland).
The museum is situated in a building dating from 1960, and it has three floors. After restructuring in 2011 the museum is open again, and its exhibition area has been expanded from 11,000 square metres (120,000 sq ft) to 19,000 square metres (200,000 sq ft).
The museum also has its own library, documentation centre, bookshop and auditorium.
Collection
The museum's collection includes the first Italian cars, a Bernardi from 1896 and a Fiat from 1899, a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost from 1914, and racing cars by Ferrari and Alfa Romeo. Also included are for instance an 1893 Benz Victoria, an 1894 Peugeot, a 1904 Oldsmobile, the 1907 Itala from the Peking to Paris race, a 1913 De Dion-Bouton, a 1916 Ford T and the 1929 Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8A that starred in Sunset Boulevard.
Documentation Centre
The Documentation Centre collects historical data sheets, photographs, documents, sales brochures, construction diagrams, and everything related to cars that they were able to collect over the years. The collection consists of photographs by tens of thousands of prints in black and white and it works in conjunction with the Ministry for Cultural Heritage.
Library
The museum's library holds about 7,000 texts, most of them out of print and hard to find.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile” as museum in Turin, Italy. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as museum in Turin, Italy. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2836365. VIAF identifies the subject as 147274628. The Library of Congress control number is n93013429. Authority coordinates are 45.032, 7.673. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 2011, 1896 and 1899.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile primary sources, Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile archive and Museo research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile”?
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- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
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This entry incorporates text from “Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.